BETTER-WORLD 
PHILOSOPHY 

A  SOCIOLOGICAL  SYNTHESIS 


BY 

J,  HOWARD  MOORE 


I 

4  EX 


I 


BETTER-WORLD 
PHILOSOPHY 


BETTER-WORLD 

PHILOSOPHY 

A  SOCIOLOGICAL  SYNTHESIS 

BY 

J.  HOWARD  MOORE 


CHICAGO 

THE    WARD    WAUGH    COMPANY 

McVICKER'S  BUILDING 

1899 


COPYRIGHTED,  1899 
BY  J.  HOWARD   MOORE 


,  HIS  book  does  not  claim  to  be 
infallible — simply  serious.  No 
being  knows.  He  thinks  he 
knows.  <A  few  grams  strategically 
shifted  here  and  there  in  his  organism, 
and  he  knows,  or  thinks  he  knows, 
something  altogether  otherwise,  c/lll  is 
attitude  and  relativity. 

Chicago,  1899 


2017125 


CONTENTS 


I.    THE  PROBLEM  OF  INDUSTRY,  -        n 

1.  Man,  like  every  other  animal  in  the  known  universe, 

is  a  creature  of  desires. 

2.  In  order  to  satisfy  his  desires  he  must  manage  and 

3.  The  management  of  the  universe  is  the  task  of  industry. 

4.  Industry  is  labor. 

5.  Human  beings  escape  labor  by  shirking,  by   ma- 

chinery, and  by  cooperation. 


BLUNDERS,  -  49 

1.  There  have  been,  among  others,  two  great  blunders 

made  by  human  beings  in  their  efforts  to  manage  and 
interpret  the  inanimate  universe. 

2.  The  conception  of  the  universe  as  destitute  of  law. 

3.  The  conception  of  the  inanimate  as  animate  and  vol- 

untary. 


III.    THE  SOCIAL  PROBLEM,      -  -        73 

•»       i.     The  problem  of  life  is  the  problem  of  the  relation  of 
each  individual  to  the  rest  of  the  universe. 

2.  The  social  problem  arises  out  of  the  plurality  and  gre- 

gariousness  of  life  in  the  universe. 

3.  The  problem  of  life  socialized  is  still  the  problem  of 

the  relation  of  each  individual  of  the  universe  to  the 
rest  of  the  universe,  but  the  problem  is  peculiarized 
by  the  fact  that  conscious  individuals  sustain  to  each 
other  relations  different  from  those  sustained  to  the 
inopersonal  universe. 

4.  The   social  desires  are  the  desires  which   have  been 

evolved  by  associated  life,  and  are  satisfied,  not  by 
the  inanimate,  but  by  beings  themselves. 

5.  The  supposed  infallibility  of  "nature." 

7 


CONTENTS 


IV.    EGOISM  AND  ALTRUISM,       -  -  92 

1.  In  the  nature  of  living  beings  there  are  two  elements- 

thai  which  impels  action  in  behalf  of  self,  and  that 
which  prompts  or  prevents  movement  out  of  consid- 
eration for  others. 

2.  The  problem  of  the  origin  of  these  two  elements. 

3.  Egoism  has  been  developed  by  the  struggle  of  individ- 

uals to  survive  in  the  evolution  of  life  on  the  planet. 

4.  Altruism  has   arisen,   for  the   most  part,    from   the 

struggle  between  aggregates. 


V.    THE    PREPONDERANCE    OF 

EGOISM,  -        122 

1.  The  prevalence  of  preponderant  egoism. 

2.  The  egoism  manifested  by  the  human  species  toward 

other  species  is  the  most  insolent  and  extravagant  in 
the  universe. 

3.  The  egoism  of  human  beings  toward  human  beings. 


VI.    THE  SOCIAL  IDEAL,  -      139 

1.  The  ideal  relation  of  the  inhabitants  of  the  universe  to 

each  other  is  that  relation  which  will  aid  most 
actively  in  the  satisfaction  of  the  desires  of  the 

2.  The  relation  of  the  inhabitants  of  the  universe  to  each 

other  which  will  aid  most  actively  in  the  satisfaction 
of  the  desires  of  the  universe  is  that  which  will  enable 
the  animate  universe  as  a  whole  to  attain  that  rela- 
tion which  an  individual  living  being,  if  he  were 
alone  in  the  universe,  would  desire  to  achieve  for 
himself. 

3.  This  proposition  is  corroborated  by   the   teachings  of 

human  sages  and  by  current,  historical,  biological 
and  cosmical  tendencies. 


CONTENTS  9 

VII.    THE  DERIVATION  OF  THE  NATURES 
OF  LIVING  BEINGS,  -     169 

1.  By  the  nature  of  any  being  or  species  is  meant  the 

character  of  its  conscious  tendencies  to  move. 

2.  The  natures  of  living  beings  are  the  result  of  the  co- 

operation or  concussion  of  two  elements:  the  fortui- 
ties of  heredity  and  environment. 

and  the  internal.  The  contributions  to  evolution  of 
each  of  these  three  elements. 

VIII.     RACE  CULTURE,  -     202 

1.  The  generative  stream  will  be  regenerated  or  reformed 

in  a  manner  the  same  as  that  by  which  it  has  been 
generated,  that  is,  by  amendments  made  thru  en- 
vironmental selection. 

2.  The  agencies  in  civilized  societies  tending  to  promote 

evolution. 

3.  The  function  of  punishment. 

4.  The  activities  in  society  tending  to  neutralize  selection. 

5.  The   new   social   function   is  the  displacement  of  the 

rude  and  ruthless  discriminations  of  the  animate  and 
inanimate  environments  by  conscious  social  self- 
culture. 

IX.     INDIVIDUAL  CULTURE,        -  -    243 

1.  The  task  of  individual  culture  is  more  than  cephaliza- 
•«k  tion.    The   inculcation  of  altruism  as  important  as 

the  injection  of  facts  or  the  creation  of  capacity. 

2.  Culture  is  a  farce  because  there  is  no  systematic  recog- 

nition by  culturists  of  the  fact  that  human  beings  are 
born  egoists. 

3.  When  culture  becomes  conscious,  egoism  will  be  recog- 

nized as  the  most  formidable  fact  in  human  nature, 
and  as  valiant  efforts  will  be  made  for  its  elimination 
as  are  now  made  to  develop  the  intellect. 

4.  The  revision  of  human  nature  by  neural  violence. 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  INDUSTRY 

Man,  like  every  other  animal  known 
to  terrestrial  intelligence,  is  a  creature 
of  desires.  He  is  not  self-sufficient. 
He  is  bound  to  the  rest  of  the  universe 
by  claws  of  the  most  relentless  neces- 
sity. His  body  is  a  mechanism  made 
up  of  certain  substances  derived  from 
the  planet  on  which  he  finds  himself. 
This  mechanism  is  continually  crum- 
bling and  wasting  away,  and  must  be 
replenished  by  additional  portions  of 
the  parent  earth.  He  lives  at  the  bot- 
tom of  an  aerial  sea,  which  is  so  capri- 
cious that  he  must  carry  about  him 
continually  an  elaborate  protection 
against  its  violent  extremes.  He  must 
be  provided~with  a  habitation  wherein 
to  lay  his  head  and  to  administer  the 
pompous  functions  of  the  household. 


12        BETTER-WORLD  PHILOSOPHT 

He  desires  a  soft  place  to  sleep,  many 
dainties  on  his  table,  and  brilliants  and 
silks  to  strut  in.  He  wishes  his  off- 
spring to  be  educated.  He  desires  the 
services  and  society  of  his  fellows.  He 
desires  to  travel  over  the  face  of  the 
earth,  and  contemplate  in  a  general 
way  how  dull  and  profitless  the  uni- 
verse would  be  without  him.  Man's 
desires  are,  indeed,  innumerable,  often 
hopeless,  and  sometimes  vile,  but  they 
may  all  be  rolled  together  into  two  : 
the  desire  to  avoid  pain,  and  the  desire 
to  experience  pleasure.  Every  con- 
scious movement  made  by  living  beings, 
from  oyster  to  philosopher,  is  directed 
toward  the  accomplishment  of  one  or 
both  of  these  ends. 

Pleasure  is  the  emotion  accompany- 
ing the  achievement  or  satisfaction  of 
a  desire.  Pain  is  the  antithesis  of 
pleasure.  It  denotes  inhibited  desires. 
The  amount  of  happiness  experienced 
by  any  being,  therefore,  depends, 
first,  on  his  talent  for  enjoyment,  that 


THE  PROBLEM   OF  INDUSTRT        13 

is,  on  the  number  and  especially  the 
intensity  of  his  impulses  ;  and  secondly, 
on  the  attitude  or  character  of  his 
environment.  The  more  numerous  and 
ample  a  being's  impulses,  the  greater 
his  capacity  for  happiness — also  the 
greater  his  liability  to  misery.  A  lean 
subjective,  a  consciousness  of  few  and 
feeble  impulses,  in  a  lean  environ- 
ment, an  environment  uninterested  in 
or  hostile  to  the  satisfaction  of  desires, 
can  not  experience  great  happiness, 
because  there  is  neither  capacity  nor 
opportunity.  A  rich  subjective  in  a 
lean  environment  will  experience  great 
discomfort,  great  pain,  because  there 
is  a  redundance  of  desire  over  oppor- 
tunity for  satisfaction.  A  gentleman 
of  culture,  accustomed  to  the  most  re- 
fined conveniences  and  associations, 
but  compelled  to  dwell  in  the  squalid 
shelters  of  savages,  would  be  pro- 
foundly wretched.  The  largest  emo- 
tional affluence  will  befall  beings  of 
ample  impulses  breathing  the  air  of  a 


14        BETTER-WORLD  PHILOSOPHT 

universe  abundantly  disposed  to  satisfy 
them. 

Man  is  a  being  of  desires.  And 
what  he  is  here  for,  according  to  him- 
self, is  to  satisfy  them.  He  is  devoted 
to  no  other  thing.  Every  muscle  he 
strains  and  every  nostrilful  he  poisons 
are  in  the  interests  of  some  desire 
which  he  is  striving  to  pacify.  All  of 
his  desires  man  does  not  satisfy,  but 
the  failure  is  no  fault  of  his.  It  is  the 
fault  of  the  universe  which  made  him 
and  in  the  heart  of  which  he  lives. 
Many  of  his  desires  he  does  not  satisfy 
because  he  has  not  the  genius.  He 
desires  frequently  to  be  in  two  or  three 
places  at  the  same  time,  but  he  is  an 
undistributable  integer.  He  often  de- 
sires to  extemporize  wings,  and  fly 
away  to  some  fair  haven  and  be  at 
rest,  but  he  is  not  built  that  way. 
Many  of  the  desires  which  he  has  the 
talent  to  satisfy  he  sacrifices.  Minor 
satisfactions  are  frequently  foregone 
for  the  sake  of  more  precious  ones 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  INDUSTRT        15 

lying  either  in  himself  or  in  others. 
Some  desires  he  postpones  and  others 
he  strangles,  and  many  he  ought  to 
strangle  that  he  does  not.  Generally 
one  or  two  desires  become  dominant 
and  suffocate  or  subordinate  the  rest ; 
for  there  is  an  evolution,  a  struggle 
and  survival,  among  the  desires  of  a 
living  being  as  truly  as  among  indi- 
viduals and  species.  Every  being 
comes'into  existence  with  a  certain  set 
of  impulses.  To  these  impulses  he  is 
absolutely  devoted,  for  they  are  the 
universe  to  him.  He  culls  and  cor- 
relates them,  he  estimates  and  pets 
them,  and  incessantly  selects  that 
assortment  of  them  whose  satisfactions 
seem  to  him  to  be  the  most  available, 
and  at  the  same  time  promise  to  yield 
to  him  the  most  valuable  total. 

It  ought  to  be  asserted,  perhaps, 
because  it  is^  so  seldom  realized,  that 
desire,  as  such,  has  no  reason  for  exis- 
tence except  to  be  satisfied.  It  is 
expediency  only  that  dictates  selective 


1 6        BETTER-WORLD  PHILOSOPHY 

satisfaction  rather  than  indiscriminate. 
The  satisfaction  of  every  desire,  "  high" 
or  "low,"  is,  per  se,  natural  and  proper. 
The  satisfaction  of  the  much  stigma- 
tized "  animal  propensities,"  or  "  car- 
nal desires,"  whatever  they  are,  may 
be  just  as  exemplary  and  noble  as  the 
satisfaction  of  the  desire  for  knowledge 
or  opulence ;  and  they  are,  in  fact,  fre- 
quently more  so.  The  only  rational 
characterization  of  a  low  desire  is  one 
incapable  of  yielding  to  the  universe  in 
its  satisfaction  large  returns  of  happi- 
ness. And  a  high  desire  is  simply  one 
affording  to  the  universe  in  its  satis- 
faction wide  and  profound  welfare. 
The  only  reason  why  any  desire,  so- 
called  "high"  or  so-called  "low," 
should  be  kept  in  abeyance  is  that  its 
satisfaction  will  not  contribute  to  the 
utilities.  There  is  no  reason  why  any 
desire  capable  of  satisfaction  possessed 
by  a  living  being  should  not  be  satis- 
fied, except  that  its  satisfaction  may 
interfere  with  the  satisfaction  of  other 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  INDUSTRT         17 

more  valuable  desires  possessed  by  the 
being  himself  or  by  other  beings. 
Every  pain  is  to  be  avoided,  except 
those  whose  endurance  will  enable  the 
avoidance  of  greater  pain,  and  every 
possible  happiness  is  to  be  harvested, 
save  those  whose  foregoing  will  help 
the  universe  to  larger  happiness. 
There  is  no  obligation  commanding 
any  being  to  endure  misery  save  to 
avoid  misery,  and  no  consideration 
demanding  any  one  to  neglect  happi- 
ness save  for  larger  happiness  —  those" 
ascetics  who  proclaim  the  divinity  of 
wretchedness  to  the  contrary  notwith- 
standing. 

If  there  were  but  one  being  in  the 
universe,  a  low  desire  would  be  either 
one  affording  to  the  possessor  in  its 
satisfaction  relatively  small  results,  or 
one  whose  satisfaction,  in  itself  impor- 
tant, were  impaired  by  the  neutralizing 
effects  upon  the  satisfaction  of  other 
desires  possessed  by  that  being,  or 
which  might  be  possessed  by  him  in 


1 8         BETTER-WORLD  PHILOSOPHT 

future.  Human  gregariousness,  how- 
ever, compels  the  contemplation  to 
widen,  and  instead  of  estimating  the 
results  of  the  satisfaction  of  a  desire 
for  one  being,  it  is  necessary,  in  deter- 
mining the  rank  of  a  desire  among 
social  beings,  to  reckon  its  results  for 
the  community  or  universe.  Hence, 
in  social  life  the  highest  desires  are,  as 
a  rule,  the  altruistic  desires,  that  is, 
desires  in  whose  satisfaction  there  is 
consideration  of  the  community  or  uni- 
verse, and  the  low  desires  are  generally, 
tho  by  no  means  invariably,  the  egois- 
tic. Desires  which  do  not  hold  in  their 
satisfaction  a  social  significance  or 
effect,  either  in  space  or  time,  are  to 
be  proceeded  with  and  estimated  as  if 
there  were  in  the  universe  one  or  two 
or  six  or  whatever  number  of  beings 
are  concerned  in  the  satisfaction.  The 
pitiful  fact  is,  that  beings  are  so  en- 
dowed with  desires  that  they  manifest 
such  superfluous  concern  as  to  the 
results  of  the  satisfaction  of  their 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  INDUSTRY         19 

desires  upon  themselves,  and  are  re- 
lentlessly unconscious  of  the  effects 
upon  the  rest  of  the  universe. 

Man,  in  satisfying  his  desires,  in 
avoiding  misery  and  achieving  happi- 
ness, strives  to  do  two  things  with  the 
inanimate  universe:  to  manage  it  and 
to  foreknow  it.  The  inanimate  is  not 
devoted  to  us.  We  are  not  birdlings 
cuddled  in  an  order  of  things  where 
we  need  simply  to  yawn  and  be  filled. 
We  must  bestir  ourselves,  or  be  in  a 
position  to  compel  others  to  bestir 
themselves  for  us,  or  perish.  We  are 
waifs,  brought  into  existence  by  a  uni- 
verse whose  solicitude  for  us  ended 
with  the  travail  that  brought  us  forth. 
The  inanimate  universe  is  our  mother, 
but  without  the  blessed  mother-love. 
The  first  thing  we  are  conscious  of, 
and  about  the  only  thing  we  ever 
absolutely  know,  is  that  we  are  whirl- 
ing around  in  a  very  helpless  manner 
on  a  whirligig  of  a  ball,  out  of  whose 
substance  by  the  sweat  of  pur  brows 


20         BETTER-WORLD   PHILOSOPHY 

we  must  quarry  our  existence.  The 
universe  is  practically  independent  of 
us. ,  But  we,  alas,  are  not  independent 
of  it.  The  food  we  eat,  our  raiment, 
our  habitations,  our  treasures,  our 
implements  of  knowledge,  and  our 
means  of  amusement  are  all  portions 
of  the  inanimate,  which  we  living  beings 
must  somehow  subtract  from  the  rest. 
In  order  to  obtain  these  indispensable 
portions  of  the  universe  about  us,  we 
must  halter  it  and  control  it  and  com- 
pel it  to  produce  to  the  tune  of  our 
desires. 

We  manage,  or  modify,  the  inani- 
mate universe  in  two  ways:  first,  by 
the  direct  application  of  the  energies 
of  our  bodies  to  contacting  tendencies;* 
and,  secondly,  by  means  of  inventions. 

*The  word  tendency,  as  used  in  this  book,  means 
simply  movement,  or  "direction  toward."  It  is  be- 
lieved to  be  more  truthful  than  force  or  energy ;  for 
the  essential  content  of  force  and  energy  is  -volition. 
There  is  no  pulling  and  hauling  and  heaving  in  the 
operations  of  the  inanimate  universe.  They  simply 
take  place.  There  is,  so  far  as  we  know,  no  more 
effort,  or  energy,  or  force  put  forth  by  the  earthquake 
than  by  the  opening  flower.  Volition  and  effort  have 
no  existence  outside  of  consciousness. 


THE  PROBLEM   OF  INDUSTRY         21 

Among  non-human  beings,  portions  of 
their  own  bodies — jaws,  talons,  hands, 
tail,  tongue,  proboscis  and  the  like — 
fashioned  into  contrivances,  are  almost 
the  only  means  possessed  by  them  for 
modifying  their  environment.  Bare 
bodies,  however,  are  not  formidable 
when  matched  against  the  immense 
processes  of  the  infinite,  and  among 
nearly  all  the  human  races  bodily  con- 
trivances are  supplemented  by  con- 
trivances of  various  kinds  fashioned 
out  of  portions  of  the  inanimate  uni- 
verse. The  lever,  the  screw,  the 
wedge,  and  the  pulley,  and  these  elab- 
orated into  the  most  complicated  and 
accomplished  inventions,  are  the  ma- 
chinery with  which  human  beings  assist 
their  bare  hands  in  modifying  and 
dominating  the  universe  of  things. 

An  invention  made  from  some  por- 
tion of  the  inanimate  universe  is  not 
identical  with,  but  does  not  differ 
essentially  from,  one  made  from  some 
portion  of  a  creature's  own  body. 


22         BETTER-WORLD  PHILOSOPHY 

Since  the  lever  is  the  essence  of  both 
classes  of  contrivances,  they  are  in 
principle  the  same.  Both  are  special- 
ized portions  of  matter  used  to  effec- 
tualize  the  energy  of  living  beings,  and 
both  require  acumen  for  their  contriv- 
ance. It  does  not  require  less  ingenu- 
ity for  a  beaver  to  contrive  a  trowel 
out  of  the  material  of  his  own  tail  than 
for  a  human  plasterer  to  devise  a  simi- 
lar implement  out  of  a  piece  of  steel. 
And  the  living,  palpitating  tail  is  as 
truly  a  labor-assisting  device  as  the 
inanimate  metal.  The  ground  mole 
which  first  contrived  a  way  by  which  it 
could  plow  up  the  soil  with  its  nose 
was  as  veritably  an  inventor  and  a 
genius  as  the  ancient  troglodyte  who 
first  scarred  the  surface  of  the  planet 
with  a  stick.  And  the  first  mole-nose 
plow  was  probably  no  more  crude  com- 
pared with  the  more  evolved  and 
accomplished  ones  of  modern  moles 
than  the  straight  stick  compared  with 
the  steam  cultivator. 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  INDUSTRY        23 

There  is  another  class  of  inventions 
— those  which  utilize  the  tendencies  of 
the  inanimate  itself.  The  resources 
for  his  conflict  with  nature  man  must 
draw  from  his  own  body  or  from  the 
bodies  of  other  beings,  unless  he  can 
by  some  means  induce  some  of  the 
tendencies  of  the  inanimate  to  join 
him.  This  he  has  done.  Like  the 
dog  and  the  falcon,  whom  man  has 
subdued  and  compelled  to  help  him  in 
his  further  subjugation  of  the  wild 
tribes  of  nature,  so  the  winds  and  the 
waters  have  been  captured  and  com- 
pelled to  ally  themselves  with  man 
against  the  rest  of  the  inanimate.  The 
wind  mill,  the  water  wheel,  and  the 
steam  engine  are  inventions  of  this 
sort.  They  capture  the  wild  tendencies 
of  nature  and  harness  them  for  the 
most  startling  accomplishments.  So 
many  or  these  tendencies  are  now 
devoted  to  the  service  of  man,  and 
they  have  been  so  sagaciously  trained 
that  the  task  of  industry  has  become 


24         BETTER-WORLD  PHILOSOPHY 

to  a  considerable  extent  the  superin- 
tendence of  throttles.  Cataracts  weave 
fabrics,  breezes  draw  the  waters,  and 
steam  does  about  everything  man  can 
do  except  keep  cool.  And  if  the  pres- 
ent dramatic  differentiation  of  things 
continues,  it  would  not  startle  prophets 
much  to  see  waterfalls  ybefore  many 
years  cultivating  crops  on  the  prairies 
of  Kansas. 

The  sun,  of  course,  is  the  chief 
source  of  all  kinds  of  terrestrial  ten- 
dency, both  animate  and  inanimate. 
The  sun  shining  unequally  on  the 
atmosphere  causes  the  winds.  The 
sun  lifts  the  waters  to  the  mountain 
top  and  sends  them  tobogganing  to 
the  sea.  The  sun  shining  on  primeval 
forests  created  our  coal  deposits.  The 
hard,  black  carbon  blocks,  which  we 
to-day  dig  from  the  earth  to  feed  to 
our  engines,  are  sunbeams  which  fell 
on  the  earth  long  ages  before  sunbeams 
fell  on  men.  The  source  of  all  animal 
energy  is  the  plant,  which  stores  its 


THE   PROBLEM  OF  INDUSTRT        25 

potentialities  from  the  sun.  An  ear  of 
corn  or  wheat  is  a  battery  of  radiant 
energy  which  our  bodies,  by  means  of 
affinities,  discharge  in  deeds  of  kind- 
ness, crimes,  and  one  thing  and  another. 
Shut  the  sunshine  from  the  spaces  and 
the  arrogant  processes  here  on  earth 
will  for  the  most  part  lapse  into  sepul- 
chral impotence.  The  most  funda- 
mental invention  of  any  age,  therefore, 
will  be  that  which  will  harness  the  sun- 
beam itself,  as  it  streams  in  fresh  from 
the  spaces,  and  hitch  the  golden  filly 
directly  to  our  spindles,  our  mills,  and 
our  muscles,  instead  of  apprehending 
it  in  the  torrent,  the  gale,  and  the  vege- 
table. It  would  seem  very  strange  to 
us,  of  course,  because  we  are  so  unin- 
itiated and  so  carnal,  but  future  men 
may  dine  on  sunbeams  as  we  now  dine 
on  beans. 

The  second  thing  we  wish  to  do  with 
the  inanimate  universe  is  to  foreknow 
its  movements.  We  wish  to  foreknow 
the  inanimate  simply  because,  and  just 


26        BETTER-WORLD  PHILOSOPHT 

to  the  extent  that,  we  are  unable  to 
manage  it.  With  all  our  vanity  and 
machinery,  and  with  all  the  tendencies 
we  have  wheedled  into  our  services,  we 
are  able  to  influence  only  the  margins 
of  things.  The  great  fundamental 
processes  roll  on  as  if  we  did  not  exist. 
We  live  at  the  bottom  of  an  aerial 
deep  whose  abilities  we  can  utilize,  but 
whose  moods  and  petulance  we  are 
powerless  to  determine.  The  plant 
kingdom,  at  whose  mercy  we  subsist, 
depends  for  its  processes  on  atmos- 
pheric contingencies,  and  these  con- 
tingencies in  turn  depend  upon  inter- 
planetary conditions.  The  ball  over 
whose  surface  we  creep,  and  about  the 
possession  of  which  we  cavil  so  cease- 
lessly, whisks  us  alternately  thru  glare 
and  gloom  and  thru  seasons  of  bounty 
and  dejection,  and  we  can  do  nothing 
but  bewail  our  own  helplessness. 

The  only  thing  we  can  do  with  these 
too-powerful  processes  of  the  inani- 
mate is  to  do  the  best  we  can  to  keep 


THE  PROBLEM   OF  INDUSTRT        27 

out  of  their  way.  We  may  upholster 
the  hardships  of  an  approaching  mis- 
sile, even  tho  we  are  not  able  to  stay 
it,  if  we  can  anticipate  its  approach. 
We  can  not  arrest  the  retreat  of  the 
sun  southward  in  the  autumn  time,  but 
we  can  garner  our  harvests  and  pile 
fuel  for  our  fireplaces,  and  defy  the 
desolation  from  the  poles.  We  can 
not  stop  the  rotation  of  the  planet  on 
which  we  whirl,  but  we  can  foretell  the 
hours  of  sun  and  shade,  and  this 
foreknowledge  is  of  almost  infinite 
convenience  to  us.  We  can  not  disperse 
tornadoes,  but  we  can  build  subterra- 
nean shelters  and  receive  from  the  sig- 
nal service  warnings  to  get  into  them. 

The  ability  to  prophesy  concerning 
the  every-day  matters  of  life  is  so  com- 
monplace, and  upon  it  so  largely 
depends  our  well-being  from  moment 
to  moment  and  from  day  to  day,  that 
the  most  conscious  of  us  can  not  easily 
estimate  its  importance.  If  carbon 
and  oxygen  were  as  frequently  repul- 


28         BETTER-WORLD  PHILOSOPHT 

sive  to  each  other  as  attractive,  and 
were  as  often  indifferent  as  otherwise, 
and  analysis  were  powerless  to  discern 
any  method  in  their  moods — if  liquids, 
when  unrestrained,  sometimes  moved 
toward  the  center  of  the  earth  and 
sometimes  away  from  it,  and  with  no 
perceivable  regularity— if  the  sun,  on 
going  down  at  evening,  were  as  liable 
to  appear  in  the  north  or  the  south  or 
some  place  else  as  in  the  east,  and 
liable  to  rise  two  weeks  or  two  or  three 
months  later  instead  of  exactly  ten 
hours,  forty-six  minutes,  and  sixteen 
seconds— if,  in  short,  there  were  no 
regularity,  nothing  but  originality,  in 
the  behavior  of  the  universe,  then  were 
living  beings  indeed  doomed  perpetu- 
ally to  a  pitiful  fate.  Few  have  the 
talent  to  realize,  too,  how  largely  our 
ill-being  depends  on  our  inability  to 
foresee  our  material  future.  Take,  as 
an  instance,  the  atmosphere.  The 
atmosphere  is  our  most  immediate 
environment,  and  sustains  to  us  a  more 


THE   PROBLEM  OF  INDUSTRY        29 

vital  relation  than  does  any  other  por- 
tion of  the  universe.  It  is,  in  the  first 
place,  almost  entirely  unmanageable, 
and,  secondly,  it  is  so  disingenuous  that 
it  is  little  understood.  Since  we  are 
powerless  to  compel  the  atmosphere 
to  be  and  to  do  as  we  desire,  if  we  were 
only  able  to  foretell  for  each  day  or 
for  each  week  or  for  each  season  just 
how  it  would  be,  whether  cold  or  hot, 
violent  or  calm,  cloudy  or  clear,  humid 
or  dry,  we  would  be  much  happier  and 
much  less  reprehensibly  tempered 
animals.  If  droughts  could  be  fore- 
told, crops  need  not  be  planted.  If 
tornadoes  could  be  anticipated,  their 
pathway  might  be  vacated.  Nearly 
every  human  enterprise  requiring  time, 
from  neighborhood  gossiping  to  agri- 
culture, has  mixed  up  with  it  more  or 
less  of  hazard  and  contingency  because 
of  our  ignorance  of  the  meteorological 
future.  Aquatic  and  subterranean 
creatures  are,  of  course,  little  affected 
by  the  atmosphere.  But  the  creatures 


30        BETTER-WORLD  PHILOSOPHT 

that  creep  over  the  atmospheric  bottom 
and  they  that  swim  in  its  bosom — it  is 
not  at  all  adequately  realized  how 
much  the  inability  to  manufacture  and 
anticipate  atmospheric  moods  affects 
their  happiness. 

The  management,  or  modification, 
of  the  universe  is  the  task  of  human 
industry.  It  requires  labor,  expendi- 
ture of  energy,  waste.  The  inanimate 
universe  upon  which  man  acts  and  the 
contrivances  which  he  wields  in  his 
activity  are  two  of  the  elements  of 
industry.  The  third  element  is  the 
labor  of  human  and  other  beings.  Man 
may  contrive  levers  and  domesticate 
the  wild  tendencies  of  the  inanimate, 
but  they  must  be  watched  and  supple- 
mented in  order  to  effect  desired  modi- 
fications. So  long  as  clouds  continue 
to  fall  in  nothing  more  nutritious  than 
rain,  somebody  imist  work.  All  change 
of  place  caused  by  a  living  being, 
whether  it  be  a  modification  of  the 
inanimate  universe,  or  self-movement 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  INDUSTRY        31 

on  the  part  of  the  being  to  modify  his 
relation  to  the  inanimate,  requires  the 
expenditure  of  energy  by  him  who 
causes  the  change.  The  expenditure 
of  energy  by  a  living  being  is  labor, 
and  labor  among  human  beings  is,  for 
the  most  part,  an  experience  to  be 
avoided  rather  than  sought.  Labor  is 
not  its  own  reward.  If  the  universe, 
failing  to  provide  for  us,  had  charged 
us  with  tireless  energies,  had  made 
labor  sweet  and  sought  after,  it  would 
have  saved  us  the  worry  and  bad 
humor  of  many  an  industrial  tangle. 
But  labor  is  not  sought  after.  It  is 
shunned.  It  is  a  necessary  evil.  We 
endure  it  as  we  endure  bramble  pricks. 
It  is  the  softest  of  two  horns,  not  a  rich 
and  fragrant  couch  sought  for  its  in- 
trinsic delights.  We  submit  ourselves 
to  it  simply  because  it  is  so  much  worse 
to  starve,  and  also  because  it  is  so 
refreshing  to  stand  on  the  heads  of  our 
fellow-men  to  crow. 

There    has   been,  therefore,   a    ten- 


32         BETTER-WORLD   PHILOSOPHT 

dency  among  living  beings,  especially 
among  human  beings,  and  shared 
pretty  evenly  by  both  sexes,  to  avoid, 
as  much  as  possible,  this  very  disagree- 
able but  indispensable  function.  Labor 
is  pain,  and,  like  all  other  pain,  human 
beings  have  struggled  to  escape  it. 
They  have  attempted  escape  in  three 
ways:  by  shirking,  by  machinery,  and 
by  cooperation.  . 

The  human  species  is  the  most 
formidable  of  the  species  inhabiting 
the  earth.  It  is  the  most  ubiquitous, 
the  most  clannish,  and  the  most 
strategic.  The  non-human  species 
have,  on  this  account,  many  of  them, 
long  been  subject  to  the  dominion  of 
the  human.  The  horse,  the  ox,  'the 
fowl,  the  sheep,  the  dog,  and  the  camel 
have  from  time  immemorial  been  com- 
pelled to  undergo  the  most  cruel 
slaveries  for  the  benefit  of  their  tyrant 
species.  Man  has  not  only  compelled 
these  races  to  submit  to  terrible  servi- 
tudes, but  he  has  subjected  them  to 


THE  PROBLEM   OF  INDUSTRY        33 

the  most  unparalleled  personal  plun- 
der, unhesitatingly  advancing  even  to 
extermination,  whenever  such  exter- 
mination would  contribute  to  human 
nutrition,  human  amusement,  or  human 
whim.  In  fact,  all  the  non-human 
races  have  been  presumed  to  possess 
no  raison  d^tre  except  to  cater  in  one 
way  or  another  to  the  master  species. 
They  have  been  slaves  and  scapegoats 
upon  whom  human  beings  have  shifted, 
or  have  attempted  to  shift,  all  possible 
hardship. 

But  the  human  species,  as  the  domi- 
nant species  of  the  earth,  has  not  ex- 
hausted its  inclination  to  shirk  hardship 
by  enslaving  and  victimizing  the  non- 
human.  The  more  powerful  races  of 
the  human  species  have  perpetrated 
on  the  less  powerful  injustices  anal- 
ogous to  those  perpetrated  by  human 
beings  as  a  whole  upon  non-humans. 
Human  history  is  little  more  than  the 
conquest  and  rapine  and  enslavement 
of  one  aggregate,  national  or  social,  by 


34        BETTER-WORLD  PHILOSOPHY 

another.  It  has  been  a  shamefully 
short  time  since  all  the  religions  and 
philosophies  of  the  Aryans  proclaimed 
the  propriety  of  the  enslavement  of 
black,  red,  and  tan  by  the  triumphant 
and  heartless  white.  These  less  power- 
ful races  were  assumed  to  have  been 
brought  into  the  universe  without  the 
vaguest  sort  of  equity  in  the  enjoyment 
of  life,  but  solely  as  accessories  of  their 
masters. 

The  more  powerful  classes  of  each 
nationality  and  race  continue  the  anal- 
ogy of  victimization.  The  weak  are 
always  exploited  by  the  strong,  the 
weak  species  by  the  strong  species,  the 
weak  nation  or  nationality  by  the 
strong  nation  or  nationality,  and  the 
weak  class  or  clique  by  the  strong  class 
or  clique.  The  highest  human  societies 
of  the  earth  are  not  exceptions.  Master 
and  slave  survive  in  the  very  capitals 
of  culture.  Their  relation  among  the 
genteel  contains  more  of  subtlety  and 
finesse,  but  little  less  vigorous  reality. 


THE  PROBLEM   OF  INDUSTRY        35 

Slavery  is  the  compulsory  subjection  of 
one  being  or  set  of  beings  to  another, 
the  suppression  or  extermination  of 
one  being  or  set  of  beings  by  another 
to  whom  the  one  being  or  set  is  com- 
pelled to  act  as  means.  And  slavery  in 
this  sense  is  found  everywhere  among 
the  most  genteel  aggregates  of  the 
earth  at  this  moment.  The  enact- 
ments of  human  aggregates  whereby 
the  most  astute  and  avaricious  are 
allowed  to  monopolize  the  elements  of 
production,  or  the  only  two  elements 
capable  of  monopoly  (the  inanimate 
earth  and  the  machinery  used  to 
modify  it);  the  enactments  creating 
the  possibility  of  inheritances  whereby 
monopolies  may  be  enlarged  from  gen- 
eration to  generation;  and  the  enact- 
ments whereby  monopolies  may  be 
confederated  into  trusts  for  the  effect- 
ual suppression  of  rivalry — such  enact- 
ments, by  actually  shutting  out  masses 
of  human  beings  from  the  means  of 
production,  establish  slavery,  more 


36        BETTER-WORLD  PHILOSOPHY 

equivocally  and  adroitly,  but  not  less 
actually,  than  enactments  permitting 
direct  and  overt  dominion. 

Human  beings  arriving  on  the  earth 
without  looms  and  reaping  hooks  in 
their  hands  and  without  a  right  to  the 
soil  that  sustains  them,  rinding  all  the 
machinery  claimed  and  the  surface  of 
the  planet  preempted,  can  do  one  of 
three  things:  they  can  rent  themselves 
to  the  owners  of  things;  they  can  enter 
the  professions  where  lands  and  imple- 
ments are  not  needed;  or,  if  they  have 
the  heroism  and  the  genius,  they  can 
steal.  Not  everybody  can  crowd  into 
the  professions,  and  most  men  are  too 
clumsy  or  too  conscientious  to  steal. 
So  the  disinherited  loan  themselves  to 
the  possessors  of  things,  the  landlords 
and  the  capitalists,  who  allow  to  them 
a  rental  for  the  use  of  their  bodies. 
The  industrial  system  which  allows  the 
unlimited  appropriation  of  land  and 
inventions  furnishes  to  the  more  power- 
ful and  avaricious  classes  of  communi- 


THE   PROBLEM   OF  INDUSTRY        37 

ties  the  means  by  which  they  compel 
the  rest  to  labor  for  them.  And  not 
to  call  such  deprivation  slavery  is  to 
neglect  to  use  the  word  with  its  most 
essential  connotation.  The  human 
beings  who  possess  the  dominion  of 
land  and  machinery  and  compel  others, 
in  order  to  obtain  the  essentials  of 
existence,  to  serve  them,  are  as  truly 
masters  of  slaves  as  they  who  exact 
blood  from  the  dorsals  of  their  fellows 
with  literal  slave  whips. 

All  of  these  victimizations,  the  en- 
slavement of  species  by  species,  of  race 
by  race,  and  of  class  by  class,  are 
aspects  of  one  and  the  same  funda- 
mental fact.  They  are  all  exemplifica- 
tions of  the  same  principle — the  prin- 
ciple asserting  the  right  to  escape  one's 
part  in  the  hardships  of  life — the  doc- 
trine that  the  weak  are,  and  of  right 
ought  to  be,  the  means,  and  the  strong 
the  ends  —  the  doctrine  that  might 
makes  it  right  for  some  to  burglarize 
the  lives  of  others  of  all  that  is  pre- 


38        BETTER-WORLD  PHILOSOPHY 

cious,  and  at  the  same  time  to  add  to 
others'  woes  by  the  compulsory  imposi- 
tion of  their  own. 

The  second  means  by  which  human 
beings  have  sought  to  avoid  and  effec- 
tualize  labor  is  machinery,  or  inven- 
tion. Inventions  are  portions  of  the 
inanimate  universe  so  modified  or  ad- 
justed as  to  achieve  ends  which  previ- 
ously had  been  accomplished  wholly 
or  partially  by  the  limbs  of  living 
beings.  All  kinds  of  contrivances  are, 
or  were  at  one  time,  inventions,  from 
the  simple  stick  with  which  the  savage 
stirs  the  soil,  to  the  factory  of  civiliza- 
tion. The  virtue  of  all  inventions  is 
that  they  lessen  the  necessity  for  labor. 
A  bicycle  will  enable  one  to  change  his 
place  five  times  as  effectively  as  walk- 
ing. A  self-binding  harvester  and  one 
man  will  do  as  much  work  as  five  men 
and  a  reaper.  A  reaper  and  five  men 
will  do  more  work  and  do  it  better  than 
twenty  men  with  cradles  and  rakes. 
And  the  cradle  was  considered,  when 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  INDUSTRT        39 

it  superseded  the  reaping  hook,  a  won- 
derful invention.  A  type-setting  ma- 
'chine  performs  the  same  kind  and 
quantity  of  work  as  five  men.  A  Hoe 
printing-press  will  cut,  print,  fold,  and 
address  55,000  newspapers  in  an  hour, 
an  achievement  which  two  generations 
ago  would  have  required  300  men.  A 
modern  match-making  machine  will 
perform  the  entire  process  involved 
in  the  manufacture  of  matches,  from 
sawing  the  timber  out  of  which  they 
are  made  to  counting  and  boxing  them, 
at  the  incredible  rate  of  6,000  or  7,000 
a  minute.  It  is  impossible  to  estimate 
and  almost  impossible  to  conceive  to 
what  extent  such  contrivances  as  the 
cotton  gin,  the  mill,  and  the  railroad 
have  added  to  the  efficiency  of  human 
labor.  A  single  gin,  which  does  not 
need  to  be  whipped  nor  hunted  with 
blood-hounds,  will  gin  the  cotton  of  a 
community  of  plantations;  and  a  few 
girls  and  a  factory  will  do  more  work 
than  an  unequipped  army.  Think  of 


40        BETTER-WORLD  PHILOSOPHT 

an  overland  trip  across  this  continent 
fifty  years  ago!  Six  long  months  of 
struggle!  To-day  a  New  Yorker  may 
seat  himself  in  one  of  the  great  trans- 
continental projectiles  on  Monday,  and 
on  Friday  pick  oranges  in  the  groves 
of  San  Diego.  Inventions  such  as  the 
mill  and  the  engine,  which  utilize  the 
possibilities  of  air,  water,  and  steam, 
are  fundamental  inventions,  and  fur- 
nish to  mankind  incalculable  refresh- 
ment, by  securing  for  the  modification 
of  the  universe  the  service  of  tenden- 
cies outside  the  bodies  of  human  beings 
themselves. 

Inventions  are  a  blessing.  They 
tame  the  wild  tendencies  of  the  inani- 
mate and  train  them  to  do  human  bid- 
ding. They  save  human  bodies  hard 
and  laborious  exertions  by  becoming 
their  obsequious  aids.  But  they  are 
not  invariable  and  universal  blessings. 
The  sad  and  peculiar  conditions  pre- 
vailing in  human  industry  cause  inven- 
tions to  be  to  many  human  beings  a 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  INDUSTRT        41 

catastrophe  and  a  dread.  To  those 
who  are  able  to  own  them  and  have 
lands  on  which  to  operate  them  they 
are  blessings.  But  to  the  great  disin- 
herited class,  who  have  nothing  on 
earth  but  their  hands,  inventions  are 
a  disadvantage  and  an  evil.  Those 
who  have  not  land  nor  machinery  must 
subsist  on  that  for  which  they  can  sell 
the  use  of  their  bodies.  Their  pros- 
perity consists  in  a  large  demand  for 
their  services.  Anything  which  tends 
to  dispense  with  and  cheapen  their 
labor  is  an  injury  to  them.  This  is 
precisely  the  function  of  inventions. 
Their  very  virtue  lies  in  lessening  the 
necessity  for  labor.  Take  the  type- 
setting machine.  Suppose  this  to  be 
introduced  into  a  city  containing 
twenty-five  hundred  compositors.  Five 
hundred  machines  will  do  the  service 
previously  done  by  the  twenty-five 
hundred  men,  and  only  five  hundred 
men  are  required  to  attend  them. 
Twenty  hundred  workmen  are,  there- 


42        BETTER-WORLD  PHILOSOPHT 

fore,  dispensable.  And  just  such  con- 
ditions, conditions  with  little  demand 
for  labor  and  a  vast  deal  of  it  to 
be  had,  tend  to  be  created  every- 
where by  the  enormous  expansion  and 
perfection  of  machinery  in  all  the 
departments  of  industry.  This  ten- 
dency is  neutralized  in  some  measure 
by  the  additional  labor  required  to 
produce  the  machines,  and  by  the 
larger  industry  which  inventions  tend 
to  provoke.  But  after  taking  into 
account  everything,  including  the  ad- 
vantage to  the  laborer  of  cheapened 
commodities,  inventions  are  found  to 
be  blessings  to  the  possessors  of  things, 
but  to  those  deprived  of  everything 
but  limbs  they  are  misfortunes.  In- 
ventions are  the  direct  cause  of  the 
immense  wealth  of  civilized  nations — 
of  its  production,  not  of  its  congestion 
— and  they  have  been  the  most  influ- 
ential factor  in  recruiting  the  great 
gaunt-eyed  army  of  dispensables — the 
unemployed,  the  half-employed  and 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  INDUSTRT        43 

the  hardly  employed — which  is  to-day 
the  most  pathetic  and  tremendous  fact 
in  the  industrial  problem. 

The  third  means  employed  by  human 
beings  to  render  the  management  of 
the  universe  less  arduous  is  coopera- 
tion. By  cooperation  is  meant  the 
division  or  distribution  of  the  task  of 
managing  the  universe.  No  civilized 
being  produces  independently  that 
which  is  necessary  for  the  satisfaction 
of  his  desires.  Each  produces,  as  a 
rule,  that  which  is,  for  the  most  part, 
consumed  by  others,  and  each  con- 
sumes chiefly  the  products  of  others. 
The  carpenter  can  not  feed  upon  his 
architectural  productions,  nor  the 
lawyer  on  his  briefs.  The  man  who 
raises  cotton  must  have  coffee,  and 
clothes,  and  opportunities  for  vanity, 
and  these  are  furnished  to  him  in 
return  for  his  crops.  A  human  being 
may  consume  in  a  single  day  that 
which  necessitates  the  cooperation  of 
thousands  of  beings  scattered  over  the 


44         BETTER-WORLD  PHILOSOPHY 

zones — may  consume  silks  from  France 
and  Lombardy,  olives  from  Spain,  rugs 
from  the  Levant,  lumber  from  Ontario, 
tea  from  China  and  Japan,  coffee  from 
Rio,  fruits  from  Florida  and  the  Pacific, 
spices  from  Ceylon,  time-pieces  from 
Switzerland,  brilliants  from  South 
Africa,  skins  from  Argentina,  and 
metaphysics  from  Rhineland.  Each 
human  being  performs  a  function  in 
the  processes  of  industry,  and  receives, 
theoretically  at  least,  a  benefit  in  re- 
turn. Each  is  an  organ,  or  the  cell  of 
an  organ,  in  the  great  social  organism. 
Each  produces  that  which  he  wills,  and 
sends  his  product  forth  into  the  circu- 
lating fund  of  civilization,  and  each  in 
turn  subtracts,  or  is  supposed  to  sub- 
tract, from  this  fund  the  elements 
necessary  to  his  maintenance.  The 
analogy  between  the  physiological  and 
social  organisms  in  their  procedures  is 
incomplete,  because  industry  is  unor- 
ganized and  unconscious.  The  func- 
tions performed  by  the  cells  and  organs 


THE  PROBLEM   OF  INDUSTRY        45 

of  a  physiological  organism  are  all 
performed  for  the  welfare  of  the  entire 
organism.  They  are  bound  together 
by  niceties  of  sympathy,  and  by  the 
most  careful  and  equable  correlations, 
and  they  all  conspire  to  the  one  end — 
the  general  welfare.  The  social  organ- 
ism is  rudimentary.  Its  functions  are 
uncoordinated  and  mob-like.  Every- 
where is  friction  and  intrigue  and 
treason.  Each  organ  or  cell  contem- 
plates its  own  welfare,  and  stubbornly 
maintains  unconcern  for  the  welfare  of 
others.  It  is  cooperation  heavy  with 
egoism,  inequity,  and  unfraternity. 

Cooperation  has  arisen,  as  have 
shirking  and  machinery,  because  it  is, 
or  is  destined  to  be,  in  the  line  of  least 
resistance.  Human  beings  achieve 
ends  more  easily  by  cooperation  than 
by  individual  effort.  Cooperation  util- 
izes the  diversity  of  human  talent,  and 
the  diversity  of  the  resources  and 
opportunities  of  the  planet.  Some 
human  beings  are  endowed  eminently 


46        BETTER-WORLD   PHILOSOPHY 

for  functions  of  a  certain  character, 
and  others  for  other  functions.  And  it 
would  be  the  absurdest  sort  of  economy 
for  beings  under  such  circumstances  to 
perform  functions  for  which  they  are 
indifferently  fitted.  Certain  regions 
of  the  earth,  too,  are  adapted  to  cer- 
tain styles  of  production,  and  it  would 
be  the  sagacity  of  simpletons  for  the 
inhabitants  of  each  region  not  to  pro- 
duce that  for  which  each  region  is 
especially  adapted.  Proficiency,  too, 
is  developed,  and  time  is  economized, 
by  an  arrangement  permitting  each 
individual  to  continue  uninterruptedly, 
or  for  long  periods  of  time,  in  the  same 
occupation. 

The  opportunity  for  exploitation 
afforded  by  the  divisions  of  labor  is, 
however,  a  grave  offset  to  the  advan- 
tage of  economy.  The  higher  the 
differentiation  of  function,  the  more 
dependent  and  helpless  does  each  part 
become,  and  the  ampler  the  opportunity 
for  conspiracy  of  one  part  against  an- 


THE  PROBLEM   OF  INDUSTRT        47 

other,  and  against  the  organism  as  a 
whole.  Such  gigantic  combinations, 
plots,  and  exactions  as  characterize 
industry  to-day  are  possible  only  in  a 
system  so  specialized  as  to  render  each 
part  in  the  social  order  highly  helpless. 
The  task  of  industry  has  become  so 
divided  and  sub-divided,  and  each 
human  being  performs  functions  of 
such  universal  significance,  that  the 
industrial  transgressions  of  a  single 
soul  or  set  of  souls  sends  the  universe 
awry.  He  who  makes  toothpicks, 
since  toothpicks  are  a  necessity  to  the 
world,  may  plunder  the  universe. 

But  it  is  a  splendid  spectacle,  defec- 
tive, and  disorderly,  and  maudlin  as  it 
is — the  spectacle  of  the  diversity  and 
correlation  of  human  industries,  the 
spectacle  of  a  human  being's  sitting 
down  three  times  daily  to  a  repast  in 
whose  preparation  a  majority  of  the 
nations  of  the  earth  (whom  he  has  re- 
quited by  quiet  labor  in  his  shop  or 
garden)  have  taken  part,  and  the  col- 


48        BETTER-WORLD  PHILOSOPHT 

lection  and  elaboration  of  the  materials 
for  which,  if  accomplished  by  the  par- 
taker alone,  would  have  required,  per- 
haps, if  he  could  have  accomplished 
them  at  all,  a  long  lifetime. 


BLUNDERS 

There  have  been,  among  others,  two 
great  blunders  made  by  human  beings 
in  their  efforts  to  manage  and  interpret 
the  universe.  The  first  blunder  has 
been  in  considering  the  inanimate  uni- 
verse as  whimsical,  or  lawless.  The 
lowest  intelligences  on  the  earth  have 
no  suspicion  of  law,  as  law,  in  the  oper- 
ations of  nature.  They  have  not  the 
talent  to  contain  the  conception,  if 
they  had  the  intelligence  to  suspect  it. 
Only  the  most  mature  individuals  of 
the  most  highly  evolved  human  races 
have  any  genuine  and  rational  concep- 
tion of  the  universe  as  a  universe  of 
law.  Individual  human  beings  in  their 
earlier  years,  and  all  human  races  in 
infancy,  look  upon  the  universe  about 
them  as  a  disjointed,  chaotic  something, 

49 


50        BETTER-WORLD  PHILOSOPHY 

— something  without  cause  or  law,  some- 
thing incessantly  and  altogether  fan- 
tastic. It  is  so  original  and  wilderness- 
like  that  the  feeble  minds  of  children 
and  savages  are  bewildered  by  its 
phenomena.  As  mind  grows  more 
adequate,  and  experience,  individual 
and  racial,  riper,  uniformity  is  observed, 
first  in  the  more  manifest  and  every- 
day operations  of  nature,  and  later  in 
the  more  and  more  involved.  It  is  the 
more  inaccessible  phenomena,  the  dark 
and  fortressed  regions  where  mystery 
beds,  that  are  the  most  tardily  invaded 
by  analysis  and  law.  The  struggle  of 
the  human  mind  to  comprehend  the 
universe,  including  itself,  as  a  universe 
of  law  and  reliability,  is  one  of  the 
most  pathetic  spectacles  in  the  whole 
range  of  evolution.  The  panorama  of 
things  is  so  complicated  that  the 
minds  of  the  unsophisticated  are  help- 
less to  discern  in  it  more  than  the  in- 
coherent thaw  of  senseless  elements. 
Even  the  uniformity  discerned  by 


BL  UNDERS  5 1 

civilized  young,  by  savages,  and  by 
non-human  minds  is  not  an  inevitable 
uniformity.  It  is  a  uniformity  which 
may  be  terminated  at  any  moment. 
The  sun  (earth)  rolls  regularly  round 
the  earth  (sun),  not,  however,  as  a  part 
of  an  immutable  program,  but  because 
it  somehow  happens  to  do  so.  Every- 
thing, even  the  apparently  established, 
is  mutable  and  mystic.  Water  may 
change  its  nature,  the  sun  turn  to  blood, 
and  armies  disintegrate  at  the  passing 
of  a  simple  wand.  There  is  no  definite 
and  fixed  amount  of  matter  in  the 
universe,  matter  being  continually 
created  and  annihilated,  and  there  is 
no  correlation  among  its  tendencies. 
I  can  remember  well  when  I  conceived 
that  things  could  be  and  were  without 
difficulty  deprived  of  and  endowed 
with  material  existence,  and  that 
tendencies  came  into  existence  and 
perished  without  necessary  cause  or 
consequence.  It  is  this  stage  of  intelli- 
gence that  revels  in  magic,  wonders, 


52         BETTER-WORLD  PHILOSOPHY 

miracles,  and  the  like,  and  which  con- 
ceives cosmologies  in  which  the  universe 
is  supposed  to  have  been  created.  A 
cosmogony,  such  as  that  found  in  the 
Genesis  of  Hebrew  scriptures,  origi- 
nates very  naturally  in  an  age  such  as 
the  one  in  which  these  scriptures  were 
conceived,  an  age  ignorant  of  the  in- 
destructibility of  matter  and  the  cor- 
relation and  equivalence  of  tendencies. 
But  it  could  not  possibly  originate 
among  the  scientific  world  of  the  pres- 
ent generation. 

Necessary,  or  inevitable,  uniformity 
was  first  discovered  in  the  rude  and 
formidable  phenomena  of  the  rocks 
and  rivers,  the  seas  and  seasons,  the 
earth  as  a  whole,  and  the  sun  and 
stars.  The  inorganic  was  the  first  to 
come  under  the  dominion  of  law, 
because  it  is  the  least  sophisticated 
part  of  the  universe.  Nature  is  here 
plain  and  straightforward.  Long  after 
mind  had  ceased  to  believe  in  the 
phlogiston  of  flame,  the  aureity  of  gold, 


BLUNDERS  53 

and  the  mystic  dissolution  ot  moun- 
tains, it  continued  to  account  for  the 
phenomena  of  plants  by  a  "vital 
principle,"  and  to  endow  animals  (the 
bigoted  part  of  them  at  least)  with  an 
animating  subtlety  called  "soul."  Even 
to-day,  by  most  civilized  beings,  and 
even  by  those  with  sufficient  appre- 
ciation of  chemistry  and  physics  to 
recognize  law  in  the  operations  of  the 
inorganic  and  botanical  worlds,  ani- 
mals, especially  human  animals,  are 
believed  to  be  somehow  above  and  in- 
dependent of  law.  The  flowing  of 
the  rivers  and  the  atmospheres  is  ex- 
plained in  terms  of  the  radiant  and 
gravitant  tendencies,  and  the  circula- 
tion of  sap  in  the  haw  and  mulberry, 
and  its  transformation  into  foliage  and 
fruit,  are  perceived  to  be  explicable  by 
the  known  laws  of  chemistry  and  cap- 
illary physics ;  but  the  processes  of 
human  organisms,  these  neophytes 
take  advantage  of  the  slothfulness  of 
physiology  and  neurology  to  avow, 


54        BETTER-WORLD  PHILOSOPHT 

are  maintained  by  a  tutelary  "Ego." 
The  fantastic  manner  in  which  minds 
of  various  intelligence  and  idiosyn- 
crasy recognize  law  in  one  or  another 
department  of  phenomena,  and  help- 
lessly deny  it  to  others,  will  be  con- 
sidered by  the  more  highly  conscious 
ages  of  the  future  as  one  of  the  most 
ridiculous  and  pitiable  facts  of  intel- 
lectual evolution. 

But  the  universe,  we  may  rest 
assured,  is  all  alike,  the  intricate  and 
the  simple.  It  is  all  a  universe  of  law, 
from  the  daisy  to  the  star  and  from 
the  diatom  to  the  philosopher,  from 
the  flowing  rivers  and  growing  fields 
to  the  processes  of  our  own  brains. 
There  is  a  definite  amount  of  matter 
and  tendency  in  the  universe  and  it  is 
incapable  of  undergoing  either  sub- 
traction or  addition.  Not  any  particle 
of  matter  nor  any  tendency  has  ever 
been  known  to  have  been  created  or 
annihilated,  and  it  is  eminently  prob- 
able there  never  will  be.  Matter 


BL  UNDERS  55 

changes  its  form  and  nature.  It  has 
not  the  power  to  perish.  Tendencies 
lapse  into  other  tendencies,  but  no 
tendency  perishes  without  giving  rise 
to  correlative  tendencies.  Everywhere 
there  is  change,  nowhere  absolute 
genesis  or  absolute  death.  The  uni- 
verse is  a  stupendous  skein  of  concat- 
enations, so  far  as  we  can  make  out, 
without  beginning  or  end  —  a  vast  im- 
perturbable mechanism,  which  acts  in 
the  most  startling  but  immutable 
uniformities.  Every  cause  is  the  effect 
of  some  other  cause  and  every  effect 
is  the  cause  of  some  other  effect. 
Caprice  is  a  hallucination.  There  is 
no  caprice,  only  ignorance.  Mystery 
is  mental  clumsiness.  Identical  con- 
sequents follow  with  inexorable  cer- 
tainty identical  antecedents.  Law  is 
everywhere — as  veritably  in  voluntary 
as  in  involuntary  nature.  The  leaf  of 
the  forest  does  not  flutter  more  in- 
evitably than  the  human  heart.  The 
great  sea  heaves  in  obedience  to  the 


56        BETTER-WORLD  PHILOSOPHY 

same  laws  as  the  bosom  of  sorrow.  The 
migration  of  planets  is  not  more  im- 
mutable than  the  migration  of  birds 
and  empires.  Stars,  oceans,  species, 
storms,  leaves,  emotions,  societies, 
water-drops — all  are  correlated  and  all 
act  by  inexorable  cause  and  conse- 
quence. 

The  failure  to  apprehend  this  fact 
has  been  a  great  disadvantage  to  those 
intelligences  who  have  been  disposed 
to  manipulate  and  foreknow  things. 
They  neglected  to  study  the  universe 
in  the  first  place,  because  they  looked 
upon  it  as  unreliable  and  its  study  as 
useless.  They  were  unable,  too,  to 
anticipate  its  behavior,  for  in  the  degree 
in  which  they  believed  it  lawless  they 
believed  its  future  problematic.  The 
only  possible  way  by  which  we  can 
know  or  conjecture  the  future  is  by  a 
knowledge  of  the  past.  And  the  only 
manner  in  which  we  can  conjecture  the 
future  by  the  past  is  on  the  supposi- 
tion that  the  universe  is  true  to  itself 


BLUNDERS  57 

and  will  repeat  itself,  that  the  causes 
operating  to-day  will  in  future  produce 
effects  similar  to  the  known  effects 
produced  by  like  causes  in  the  past. 
And  if  things  just  happen,  and  are  as 
liable  to  happen  one  way  as  another, 
if  the  past,  present  and  future  are  not 
bound  together  by  chains  of  unbroken 
causation,  then  the  past  can  have  no 
interest  save  as  a  rank  and  tumultuous 
tale,  and  we  would  as  well  erase  our 
recollections,  tear  up  our  histories,  and 
establish  desolation  in  the  wake  of  the 
universe.  The  universe,  with  its  sys- 
tems, suns,  satellites,  oceans,  conti- 
nents, empires,  institutions,  and  emo- 
tions, is  evolving,  and  in  its  forms  and 
inflections  is  changing  from  moment  to 
moment  ;  but  its  great,  fundamental 
modes  of  motion  are  the  same  to-day 
as  yesterday,  and  will  be  the  same  for- 
ever. And  it  is  only  by  the  observation 
of  its  modes  of  behavior  in  the  pan- 
orama of  past  and  present  events, 
and  in  the  artificially  produced  phe- 


58         BETTER-WORLD   PHILOSOPHY 

nomena  of  experimentation,  and  by  a 
careful  classification  of  these  events, 
that  intelligences  are  at  all  able  to 
foresee  the  future. 

History,  therefore — the  study  of  the 
processes  which  lead  up  to  and  are 
the  ancestors  of  present  events — is  of 
the  utmost  possible  interest  and  value. 
It  imparts  longitude,  or  time  con- 
sciousness, to  the  mind,  and  furnishes 
indispensable  data  for  the  sciences. 
It  is  history  that  makes  astronomy 
possible,  with  its  marvelous  illumi- 
nations, and  physics  and  biology  and 
sociology  and  politics.  When  I  say 
history,  I  mean  history  rationalized, 
not  the  nonsense  of  to-day.  History 
to-day  is  a  product  of  the  conception 
of  the  universe  as  lawless,  and,  for  the 
most  part,  it  is  about  as  precious  as 
rubbish.  It  was  never  intended  to  be 
of  any  use  to  any  one,  except  as  re- 
freshment for  gossips  ;  and  it  never 
can  be,  so  long  as  it  takes  cognizance 
of  the  phenomena  it  does.  What  pos- 


BL  UNDERS  59 

sible  utility  is  there  in  the  information 
that  some  particular  idiot  succeeded 
some  other  idiot  to  the  throne  of 
somewhere,  after  a  great  deal  of  in- 
trigue and  impropriety  on  the  part  of 
both,  and  in  spite  of  the  protests  of 
idiot  number  one.  Or  that  on  a 
certain  day  in  sixteen  hundred  and 
something,  somewhere  on  the  frontiers 
of  Tuscany,  so  many  thousands  of 
enraged  bipeds  met  and  so  many 
hundreds  were  put  to  death  and  a 
great  many  more  were  the  next  thing 
to  it,  in  a  fierce  international  duel 
which  lasted  all  day.  History  is  just 
becoming  rational,  just  beginning  to 
ascertain  its  function  and  to  compre- 
hend its  rightful  domain.  History — 
not  that  fragment  we  now  call  history, 
but  the  record  and  contemplation  of 
the  evolution  of  things — the  history 
of  social  conditions  and  tendencies, 
of  theories  and  experiments,  of  laws 
and  institutions,  in  times  gone  by — 
that  wider  history  which  narrates 


60        BETTER-WORLD  PHILOSOPHT 

events  antedating  human  memory  and 
consciousness — the  history  of  the  long 
processes  in  the  evolution  of  life  on  the 
planet — history  which  tells  of  the 
mighty,  unseen  cataclysms  which  took 
place  in  the  fiery  eons  of  the  earth's 
babyhood — the  biography  of  planets 
and  systems  and  of  the  peoples  and 
institutions  that  have  evolved  upon 
them — this  is  history  in  its  future, 
rational  and  universal  sense.  And  it 
is  this  history,  data-furnisher  for  the 
social,  physical,  and  biological  sciences, 
that  has  been  excluded  from  the 
minds  of  men  by  the  dogma  that  the 
universe  is  a  universe  of  caprice. 

The  second  blunder  human  beings 
have  made  in  their  attitude  toward  the 
inanimate  universe  is  the  considering 
it  and  dealing  with  it  as  if  it  were 
animate.  Non-human  animals,  and  the 
very  lowest  human  animals,  have  no 
cosmic  curiosity,  and  hence  no  cosmic 
theories.  Their  consciousness  is  par- 
ticular and  their  problems  local.  They 


BLUNDERS  6l 

encounter  the  natural  tendencies  about 
them  in  a  half-dazed,  somnambulistic 
sort  of  way,  guided  very  largely  and 
very  inadequately  by  the  accumulated 
experience  of  their  ancestors.  But  a 
vast  majority  of  the  human  beings  that 
have  lived  upon  the  earth,  and  per- 
haps the  most  of  those  now  inhabiting 
it,  consider  the  inanimate  universe  to 
be  in  one  way  or  another  animate,  or 
personal.  Just  when  or  how  in  the 
evolution  of  intelligence  on  this  globe 
this  delusion  came  into  mind  it  is  im- 
possible to  say  with  certainty.  Whether 
it  originated  in  the  minds  of  those 
simple  beings  who,  far  away  in  the 
past,  occupied  the  hiatus  now  existing 
between  the  anthropoid  forms  and  the 
lowest  existing  varieties  of  men,  when 
these  beings  were  the  most  highly 
developed  forms  of  life  and  intelligence 
on  the  earth,  or  whether  it  originated 
later  on  in  a  stage  of  evolution  cor- 
responding to  the  simpler  minded  races 
of  existing  humans,  we  know  not.  Nor 


62         BETTER-WORLD  PHILOSOPHT 

do  we  know  by  what  processes  of  judg- 
ment the  first  intelligences  that  attrib- 
uted inanimate  phenomena  to  per- 
sonalities did  so.  The  frail  minded 
creatures,  in  looking  out  upon  the 
movements  of  the  atmospheres,  and 
the  waters,  and  the  cavalcade  of  celes- 
tial bodies,  with  nothing  whatever  to 
guide  them,  might  very  naturally  have 
imputed  to  these  bodies  consciousnesses 
similar  to  those  which  accompanied 
many  of  their  own  movements.  I 
suspect  they  did.  They  might,  again, 
have  acquired  the  conclusion  thru  the 
strange  delusion  of  dreams  and  the 
deduced  delusion  of  ghosts,  as  Mr. 
Herbert  Spencer  so  plausibly  contends. 
However  this  may  have  been,  it  is  very 
certain  that  the  panorama  of  events 
about  them  was  to  very  early  intelli- 
gences, as  it  is  to  all  savages  to-day, 
the  manifestation  of  innumerable  per- 
sonalities dwelling  behind  appearances 
and  controlling  the  course  of  things. 
In  the  hands  of  these  personalities 


BL  UNDERS  63 

human  weal  and  human  woe,  and  the 
weal  and  woe  of  all  other  beings,  were 
supposed  to  rest.  The  bounteousness 
and  abortion  of  crops,  the  outcome 
of  disease,  the  success  and  failure  of 
expeditions,  storms,  eclipses,  cataclysms 
— all  the  varied  fortunes  and  misfor- 
tunes of  creatures  were  supposed  to  be 
celestial  dispensations.  When  fortune 
favored,  when  there  was  success  in  the 
chase  or  in  war,  these  personalities 
were  believed  to  be  genial  and  inter- 
ested. Disasters  were  attributed  to 
divine  indigestion,  absent-mindedness, 
or  a  fit  of  the  sulks. 

These  personalities  were  all  anthro- 
pomorphic, and  of  course  partook  of 
the  weaknesses  and  carnalities  of  their 
creators.  They  were  fond  of  sweet- 
meats and  fine  array,  drank  wine,  and 
were  especially  susceptible  to  flattery. 
It  was  by  playing  upon  these  weak- 
nesses of  their  masters  that  men  sup- 
posed themselves  able  to  ward  off  mis- 
fortunes and  to  gain  unintended  favors. 


64        BETTER-WORLD  PHILOSOPHT 

Drinks,  dresses,  provisions,  and  praise 
were,  therefore,  regularly  offered  as 
means  for  currying  divine  favor.  And 
in  times  of  catastrophe,  real  or  sus- 
pected, and  on  occasions  of  special 
success,  as  evidence  of  appreciation, 
these  off erings  were  enhanced.  Costly 
incense  was  burned,  and  its  dainty 
aromas  daily  rose  to  royal  nostrils. 
Animals,  both  human  and  non-human, 
were  massacred  by  millions;  for  the 
gods,  like  their  devotees,  were  not 
vegetarian.  Flattery,  affection,  appeals 
to  pity,  and  even  brow-beating  were 
powerful  supplements  to  the  more 
sensuous  forms  of  influence.  Prayer 
was  supposed  to  accomplish  thru  the 
reason  what  tidbits  accomplished  thru 
the  digestion. 

To-day,  in  the  provinces  of  the  earth 
most  strongly  suspected  of  being  in- 
tellectual, the  more  material  means  of 
currying  divine  favor  have  been  aban- 
doned. The  deities  of  civilized  men 
and  women  are  not  supposed  to  eat 


BLUNDERS  65 

and  drink  and  desire  full  dress.  They 
are  attenuated  folk,  too  spirituelle  and 
fine-spun  for  anything  more  material 
than  long-winded  reminders  of  their 
importance.  Obsequiousness,  appeals 
to  vanity,  petitions,  self-abnegation, 
and  zeal  in  furthering  the  terrestrial 
enterprises  of  the  gods  are  the  recog- 
nized means  of  placation  in  our  day 
and  bailiwick. 

So  far  as  the  rationality  of  the  con- 
ception is  concerned,  it  makes  no  differ- 
ence whether  the  universe  is  conceived 
to  be  dominated  by  one  personality  or 
two,  by  an  oligarchy  of  personalities  or 
by  innumerable  personalities.  All  such 
conceptions  rest  on  the  same  kind  of 
insecurity.  The  primitive  conceptions 
are  animistic,  and  all  the  innumerable 
forms  found  among  the  more  evolved 
races  of  the  earth  to-day  are  differ- 
entiations from  this  original  proto- 
plasmic type.  There  are  concatena- 
tions of  evolving  gods,  and  the 
saints,  seraphs,  devils,  and  deities 


66        BETTER-WORLD  PHILOSOPHT 

of  civilized  folk  are  the  evolved  and 
educated  posterity  of  the  spirits  of 
the  fastnesses  and  the  ghosts  and 
witches  of  the  night  wind.  The  evolu- 
lution  from  animism  to  polytheism,  and 
from  polytheism  to  monotheism,  par- 
allels rudely  the  evolution  of  the  gen- 
eralizing talent  of  the  human  mind. 
The  age  of  animism,  when  every  indi- 
vidual rock,  glen,  and  event  has  its  own 
spirit  or  personality,  is  the  period  of 
particularization  in  the  human  intel- 
lect. As  the  generalizing  power  de- 
velops, phenomena  are  grouped,  and 
instead  of  conceiving  a  personality  for 
each  object  or  event,  each  class  has  a 
single  superintendent  who  dominates 
the  phenomena  of  his  particular  de- 
partment. There  are  superintendents 
of  the  sea,  fire,  war,  wine,  agriculture, 
love — gods  of  the  ingleside,  gods  of 
the  storm,  good  gods,  bad  gods,  sylvan 
gods,  and  so  on.  This  is  polytheism. 
And  polytheism,  as  mind  grows  more 
conscious  and  cosmic,  is  superseded  by 


BL  UNDERS  67 

a  single  supreme  executive,  assisted  by 
the  subordinates  whom  he  has  evolu- 
tionally  outstripped.  The  conception 
of  the  universe  as  a  self-sufficient  and 
self-destined  mechanism  is  the  sequent 
of  monotheism. 

The  means  by  which  placation  is  at- 
tempted, too,  is  not  rendered  rational 
or  useful  by  procedure.  That  which  is 
intrinsically  meaningless  can  not  be 
made  significant  by  strategy.  Whether 
placation  is  attempted  by  libations,  mis- 
sionary contributions,  faith,  or  provi- 
sions, and  whether  the  consequences 
hoped  for  are  immediate  or  post-mor- 
tem, matters  not.  It  is  the  same  use- 
less and  impertinent  transaction.  The 
senseless  ceremonial  of  the  poor  black 
children  in  the  sunless  jungles  of  the 
Zambesi  is  just  as  justifiable  and  just 
as  profitable  and  divine  as  the  high- 
wrought  ritualism  of  pompous  priests. 
The  supplicatigns  sent  into  the  atmos- 
phere from  this  municipality  are  more 
elaborate  and  fin-de-siecle,  but  not  more 


68         BETTER-WORLD  PHILOSOPHY 

useful,  than  the  unembellished  palaver 
of  the  savage  to  his  fetich. 

Ethics  is  the  science  of  the  relation 
of  living  beings  to  each  other.  It  at- 
tempts to  find  harmony  and  propriety 
in  these  relations,  and  it  is  a  most  legiti- 
mate and  important  science.  But  re- 
ligion, it  matters  not  how  highly  evolved 
or  how  entangled  with  morality,  is 
erroneous.  It  is  erroneous  because  it 
is  an  attempt  to  manage  and  placate 
the  inanimate  universe  on  the  assump- 
tion that  the  inanimate  is  personal  and 
voluntary,  whereas  it  is  involuntary  and 
acts  absolutely  and  only  by  material 
tendency,  or  by  what  is  usually  called 
traction.  Let  me  illustrate  what  I 
mean:  If  I  wished  to  incite  a  human 
being,  or  any  other  part  of  the  universe 
endowed  with  volition,  to  a  certain 
kind  of  conduct,  I  would  offer  to  that 
being  food  or  raiment  or  beverage  or 
advice  or  castigation  or.  emolument  or, 
some  other  something  which  would 
satisfy,  or  defeat  the  satisfaction  of, 


BL  UNDERS  69 

some  of  that  being's  desires  — something 
that  would  act  as  a  motive.  The  char- 
acter of  the  motive  offered  I  should 
determine  from  the  character  of  the 
individual  and  the  character  of  the  con- 
duct I  desired  to  cause.  But  if  I  were 
dealing  with  a  part  of  the  universe  un- 
endowed with  volition,  I  should  pro- 
ceed in  a  manner  altogether  different 
from  that  in  which  I  should  proceed 
were  I  dealing  with  a  man.  Suppose  I 
wished  to  remove  an  obstacle,  as  a 
bowlder  or  a  river:  motives  would  be 
useless.  I  might  offer  food  and  costly 
presents  and  advice;  I  might  pray  and 
have  faith  the  size  of  the  most  robust 
of  mustard  seeds;  I  might  offer  any 
possible  or  conceivable  motive  to  wThat- 
ever  spirit  or  deity  I  fancied  had  to  do 
with  these  things— but  the  bowlder 
would  lie  there  as  indifferent  to  my 
efforts  as  Gibraltar  to  the  breezes,  and 
the  river  would  flow  on  as  if  I  did  not 
exist.  But  if  by  the  use  of  a  lever  I 
neutralize  the  tendency  of  gravity  and 


70         BETTER-WORLD  PHILOSOPHT 

offer  to  the  bowlder  a  horizontal  or 
vertical  tendency  greater  than  that  of 
gravity,  I  accomplish  my  end.  A  dam 
by  offering  opposition,  or  a  new  chan- 
nel by  offering  easier  access  to  the  sea, 
would  accomplish  like  results  with  the 
river.  And  so  it  is  universally.  No 
amount  of  motive  can  influence  the 
impersonal  universe,  nor  the  personal 
universe  in  its  involuntary  phenomena, 
in  the  least  infinitesimal  degree.  It  is 
modified  by,  and  only  by,  material  ten- 
dencies. And  all  efforts  put  forth  for 
its  management  and  placation,  aside 
from  the  genuine  and  the  scientific,  are 
superfluous  and  silly. 

The  universe  is  accountable  for  itself, 
both  for  its  existence  and  for  its  modes 
of  action.  It  is  here,  useless  and  ridicu- 
lous as  it  may  seem,  and  it  has  probably 
always  been  somewhere.  The  belief 
that  it  was  produced  in  an  inconceiv- 
able antiquity,  out  of  nothing  whatever, 
by  an  architect  with  nothing  to  work 
with  but  intangible  fiats,  is  pitiable.  It 


BL  UNDERS  7 1 

never  could  have  been  created,  and  it 
can  not  be  destroyed.  It  never  has 
been  persuaded  and  it  never  can  be  in- 
fluenced in  its  involuntary  phenomena 
by  anything  but  material  tendency.  It 
contains  within  itself  all  the  potentiali- 
ties of  its  phenomena.  A  tree  falls  in 
the  forest  because  the  gravitating  ten- 
dency is  more  energetic  than  the  affini- 
ties of  its  fibers,  not  because  possessed 
by  some  rogue  of  a  spirit.  A  drought 
or  a  deluge  is  the  result  of  the  unstudied 
conspiracy  of  natural  tendencies,  and 
takes  place  or  does  not  take  place  quite 
regardless  of  the  moral  status  of  the 
affected  community.  A  plague  is  not 
an  onslaught  of  divine  petulance  to  be 
stayed  by  lamentations  and  piety.  It 
is  a  microbe,  which  can  be  circumvented 
only  by  assiduous  devotions  to  the  lava- 
tory. The  planets  are  kept  in  their 
ellipses  and  restrained  from  tangential 
waywardness,  not  by  angelic  govern- 
esses, as  Kepler  believed,  but  by  the 
tendencies  of  their  own  nature. 


72        BETTER-WORLD  PHILOSOPHT 

The  universe  of  things  in  the  midst 
of  which  we  discover  ourselves,  is  to  be 
managed  and  placated,  in  so  far  as  it  is 
to  be  managed  and  placated  at  all,  by 
the  observation  and  classification  of  its 
phenomena,  by  the  ascertainment  of  its 
habits,  and  by  ingenious  and  business- 
like manipulations  of  its  tendencies, 
and  in  no  other  way. 


THE   SOCIAL   PROBLEM 

On  the  planet  Earth  one  problem 
rises  incessantly  before  every  being. 
Whether  it  is  the  monad  moping  about 
in  the  sea-slime,  the  miser  conning  his 
accumulation's,  the  wild  bird  incubating 
her  brood,  the  firefly  kindling  its  twi- 
light torch,  or  the  lawyer  lying  about 
his  client,  the  problem  is  the  same. 
There  is  no  other  problem;  for  all  other 
problems  are  fractions  or  inflections  of 
this  one.  It  is  the  problem  involved 
in  the  relation  of  each  individual  to  the 
rest  of  the  universe.  Every  living 
creature  is  a  constituent  of  a  universe 
of  things  every  part  and  particle  of 
which  is  by  the  most  relentless  affini- 
ties related  to  and  dependent  upon 
every  other  part.  There  is  no  such 
thing  anywhere  as  isolation,  absolute 

73 


74         BETTER-WORLD  PHILOSOPHT 

detachment.  Everything  is  a  compo- 
nent part  of  a  stupendous  integer. 
Every  living  creature  is  an  activity  of 
certain  possibilities  of  emotion  subsist- 
ing amidst  a  universe  of  activities  more 
or  less  inscrutable  to  him,  a  universe 
hopelessly  inconsiderate  and  to  which 
he  is  chained  inexorably.  How  to  be- 
have so  as  to  achieve  for  himself  his 
choice  of  emotions  is  to  everything 
that  breathes  the  problem  which  in- 
cludes and  consumes  all  others. 

It  has  been  called  a  problem  of  adap- 
tation. There  is  a  subjective  and  there 
is  an  objective,  a  self  and  a  not-self. 
And  between  this  self  and  the  not-self 
there  is  incessant  irrelation.  That 
which  is  not-self  is  a  process,  always 
changing.  It  never  tires  of  adopting 
new  attitudes  toward  the  self.  The  self 
also  is  a  process,  and  hence  is  continu- 
ally losing  joint,  or  is  in  continual  dan- 
ger of  losing  joint,  with  its  environment. 
Life,  therefore,  at  best,  since  in  the 
nature  of  things  it  is  a  struggle  and  a 


THE  SOCIAL   PROBLEM  75 

search,  is  an  enterprise  with  exasper- 
ating lack  of  sunshine.  If  the  rest  of 
cosmos  were  a  conspiracy  intriguing 
for  the  maintenance  and  entertainment 
of  the  sentient  creatures  it  has  brought 
into  existence,  it  would  seem  to  be  an 
arrangement  more  creditable  and  more 
worthy  of  an  all-wise  and  amicably  dis- 
posed inventor.  But  it  is  not.  It  be- 
haves very  largely  as  if  uninformed  of 
our  existence.  It  hurries  on  in  its  un- 
concern as  if  absorbed  in  the  accom- 
plishment of  some  immense  end  of  its 
own,  leaving  us  to  provide  for  ourselves 
or  perish.  With  this  inexorable  and 
immense  mechanism  we  are  doomed 
to  associate.  It  is  not  within  living 
power  to  escape.  We  depend  upon  it 
for  everything — for  our  fortunes  and 
for  our  afflictions — for  we  are  a  part  of 
it.  We  coax  from  it  comforts  as  best 
we  can,  and  strive,  tho  vainly,  to  escape 
its  indifference.  Our  endeavor,  there- 
fore, is  adjustment,  the  getting  our- 
selves en  rapport  with  this  immensity 


76        BETTER-WORLD  PHILOSOPHT 

of  matters  in  the  midst  of  which  we 
poison  nostrilfuls. 

Now,  if  there  were  only  one  being  in 
the  universe,  or  if  the  beings  in  the 
universe  were  few  and  far  enough  be- 
tween to  be  independent  of  each  other, 
that  which  has  already  been  considered 
would  be  all  of  the  problem  of  life.  In 
such  a  case,  a  living  being  would,  in 
solving  the  problem  of  life,  need,  in  the 
first  place,  to  study  the  physical  and 
mechanical  sciences  in  order  to  be  able, 
by  the  classification  of  involuntary  phe- 
nomena and  the  ascertainment  of  in- 
animate habit,  to  control  the  tendencies 
about  him;  and,  secondly,  he  should 
contemplate  himself  and  analyze  him- 
self, in  order  to  apply  his  energies  to 
the  ingenious  and  businesslike  satis- 
faction of  his  desires.  But  one  being 
is  not  alone  in  the  universe,  nor  any- 
thing like  it.  What  creatures  there 
may  be  on  other  spheres,  we  know  not. 
The  noiseless  sapphires  that  cavalcade 
the  midnight  firmament  maybe,  for  all 


THE  SOCIAL   PROBLEM  77 

we  know,  loaded  with  wretches  like 
ourselves,  or  they  may  be  sepulchres 
which  coffin  the  ashes  of  races  that 
wailed  and  wondered  and  went  out 
ages  upon  ages  ago.  We  know  not. 
But  on  our  own  little  clod,  which  we 
arrogant  grubs  have  amplified  to  a  star 
of  the  first  magnitude,  we  know  there 
are  billions  of  beings,  all  striving  for 
similar  ends,  all  actuated  by  desires  of 
one  kind  or  another  which  they  are  en- 
deavoring with  all  the  spirit  and  saga- 
city of  their  natures  to  satisfy.  Va- 
rieties, races,  and  species  supplement 
and  overlap  each  other  everywhere 
to  such  an  extent,  and  they  are  so 
lavishly  jumbled  together,  that  there 
are  universal  clash  of  interest,  univer- 
sal ruthlessness  and  universal  inter- 
concern.  What  relation  these  inextri- 
cably mixed  and  pretty  thoroughly 
bewildered  children  should  sustain  to 
each  other,  while  they  struggle  with 
the  problem  of  the  inanimate,  is,  there- 
fore, the  second  aspect  of  the  problem 


78        BETTER-WORLD  PHILOSOPHT 

of  life,  the  aspect  out  of  which  arise 
the  ethical  and  societary  problems,  fan- 
cies, and  philosophies. 

The  plurality  and  gregariousness  of 
life  in  the  universe  immensely  com- 
plicate the  already  difficult  problem  of 
life.  The  problem  of  life  socialized  is 
still  the  problem  of  the  relation  of  each 
individual  of  the  universe  to  the  rest 
of  the  universe,  but  the  problem  is 
peculiarized  by  the  fact  that  conscious 
individuals  sustain  to  each  other  re- 
lations altogether  different  from  those 
sustained  to  the  impersonal  universe. 
The  inanimate  universe  is  related  to 
the  animate  as  means  to  end.  We 
conscious  individuals  manipulate  it  in 
manners  best  adapted  to  the  satisfac- 
tion of  our  desires.  We  barricade 
its  rivers,  plow  its  seas,  ingulf  its 
vegetations,  enslave  its  atmospheres, 
torture  its  soils,  and  perform  upon  it 
any  other  surgery  or  enormity  that 
will  help  us  in  the  satisfaction  of  these 
driving  desires  of  ours.  The  inanimate 


THE  SOCIAL   PROBLEM  79 

is,  if  reason  is  not  treason,  the  gigantic 
accessory  of  the  consciousnesses  that 
infest  it.  The  animate  environment, 
on  the  contrary,  is  related  to  each 
living  being,  not  as  means,  but  as  end. 
The  animate  universe  is  composed  of 
personalities,  and  to  these  personalities, 
possessing  as  they  do  the  gift  of 
emotion,  each  conscious  individual 
sustains  relations  which  we  call  ethical. 
Each  being  is  an  integer  in  the  stupen- 
dous scheme  of  consciousness.  To 
maintain  their  integrities  they  are  all 
striving  with  all  the  energy  and  intel- 
ligence of  their  natures.  In  the  main- 
tenance each  of  his  integrity,  he  can 
not  regardlessly  injure  or  destroy  the 
integrities  of  others.  There  must  be 
forbearance  and  reciprocity.  All  are 
ends  as  each  is  an  end.  Each  living 
being  of  the  universe,  therefore,  sus- 
tains to  every  other  living  being  the 
relation  of  possible  right  and  wrong, 
but  to  the  insentient  universe  no  such 
relation  exists.  Right  is  that  relation 


8o        BETTER-WORLD  PHILOSOPHY 

which  is  conducive  to  happiness,  or 
welfare,  or  complete  living,  or  what- 
ever synonym  is  preferred.  Wrong  is 
that  which  conduces  to  the  opposite 
of  happiness  —  misery,  ill-fare,  mal- 
adaptation.  It  is  wrong  for  one  being 
to  assault  a  fellow,  because  such  con- 
duct diminishes  the  fellow's  happiness. 
To  the  shivering  and  empty  it  is  right 
to  give  clothes  and  food,  because 
clothes  and  food  further  the  ends  of 
the  shivering  and  empty.  It  is  some- 
times well  to  administer  misery  to  a 
malefactor,  because  the  punishment, 
as  an  example,  deters,  and  thus  con- 
duces to  ultimate  welfare.  The  exter- 
mination of  criminal  races,  races  whose 
natures  menace  the  welfare  of  the 
world,  may  be-  justifiable,  tho  the 
necessity  is  always  sad,  because  with- 
out such  extermination  greater  tragedy 
would  befall  the  universe  than  the 
tragedy  of  their  extermination.  Why 
is  truth  beautiful  and  falsehood  repul- 
sive? Because  falsehood  causes  vex- 


THE  SOCIAL   PROBLEM  Si 

ation  and  truth  brings  certainty  and 
repose.  Imagine  a  lie  converted,  and 
it  sometimes  is,  so  as  to  bring  peace 
and  happiness  in  its  train,  as  does 
benevolence,  and  a  lie  will  become  a 
virtue.  Imagine  benevolence  pro- 
ducing misery,  as  does  a  lie,  and  it 
sometimes  does,  and  benevolence  will 
become  a  crime.  Falsehood,  slander, 
burglary,  murder,  drunkenness,  assault, 
are  all  ostracized,  and  benevolence, 
chastity,  heroism,  justice,  kindness, 
cleanliness,  are  approved  as  good, 
because  they  are  respectively  the 
enemies  and  promoters  of  well-being 
in  the  universe.  All  conscious  beings 
are  struggling,  struggling  to  keep 
themselves  in  joint  with  their  environ- 
ment. Those  things  and  creatures 
and  events  that  aid  them  in  their 
struggles  are  desirable  and  they  call 
them  good,  and  those  things  and  crea- 
tures and  events  that  oppose  and 
defeat  the  satisfaction  of  desires  are 
called  bad.  Right  and  wrong  exist  as 


82         BETTER-WORLD  PHILOSOPHY 

conceptions  of  mind,  because  there  are 
portions  of  the  universe  capable  of 
happiness  and  misery.  Erase  sentiency 
from  the  universe  and  you  erase 
the  possibility  of  ethics.  Every  con- 
scious portion  of  the  universe,  there- 
fore, has  ethical  relations  to  every 
other  conscious  portion  (man,  woman, 
worm,  Eskimo,  oyster,  ox),  but  not  to 
inanimate  portions  (clod,  cabbage, 
river,  rose),  because  the  ones  are 
sentient  and  the  others  are  not. 

The  plurality  of  life  has  further 
complicated  the  problem  of  life  by 
cultivating  into  existence  a  new  set  of 
very  perplexing  desires  seeking  satis- 
faction— the  social  desires  or  instincts. 
Desires  demanding  for  their  satisfac- 
tion food,  raiment,  shelter,  lands,  ma- 
chinery, etc.,  are  desires  which  have 
developed  out  of  the  comradeship  of 
the  inanimate.  Their  existence  and 
satisfaction  are  not  contingent  on 
associated  life.  Desires,  on  the  other 
hand,  such  as  the  desire  for  sympathy, 


THE  SOCIAL   PROBLEM  83 

the  desire  to  do  duty  and  philanthropy, 
the  desire  to  avoid  extinction,  the 
desire  for  beauty  and  art,  the  desire  to 
reproduce  and  its  derivatives,  and  the 
desire  to  be  superior,  which  is  the 
fundamental  of  such  a  multitude,  the 
desire  for  games  and  other  competi- 
tions, the  desire  for  fame,  character, 
and  opportunity  for  vanity,  and  the 
desire  for  social,  political,  and  pecuniary 
preferment — all  these  desires  have 
been  evolved  by  the  association  of 
human  and  other  beings  with  each 
other,  and  can  not  be  satisfied  by  the 
inanimate.  They  can  be  satisfied  by 
and  only  by  the  companionship  and 
cooperation  of  beings  themselves.  It 
would  not  satisfy  a  human  being  long- 
ing for  sympathy  to  be  presented  with 
granaries  of  farinacea,  acceptable  as 
these  things  might  be  in  the  satisfac- 
tion of  other  desires.  The  desire  for 
fame  and  applause  can  be  satisfied  by 
the  plaudits,  or  the  expectation  of  the 
plaudits,  of  glowing  masses  of  human 


84         BETTER-WORLD   PHILOSOPHY 

beings,  and  in  no  other  way.  The 
philanthropic  impulse,  the  impulse  for 
causing  happiness  and  well-being  in 
others,  could  never  be  satisfied  save  by 
the  smiles  of  gladness  kindled  by  love 
in  the  gloomy  countenances  of  pain. 
The  boisterous  exultation  of  the  vic- 
torious cock!  How  impossible  for  this 
ecstasy-clap  to  be  caused  by  a  whole 
harvest  of  eatables!  The  desire  to 
adore  and  be  adored,  that  passion  of 
the  romantic  soul,  can  be  satisfied,  not 
by  crowns  and  materialities,  but  by  the 
loving  and  undying  devotion  of  a  wor- 
shiping true-heart. 

The  problem  of  the  relation  of  living 
beings  to  each  other  is  a  tremendous, 
almost  terrible,  problem.  It  involves  in 
its  solution  such  an  arrangement  of  the 
consciousnesses  as  will  permit,  as  much 
as  possible,  of  both  material  and  social 
satisfaction.  It  involves,  furthermore, 
the  task  of  possible  desire-culture,  that 
is,  the  possibility  of  such  a  cultivation 
of  desire  as  will  enable  the  universe  to 


THE  SOCIAL   PROBLEM  85 

realize    in    their   satisfaction    a    more 
formidable  total. 

In  solving  great  cosmic  problems 
like  this,  the  tendency  of  the  human 
mind  is  to  go  to  what  is  called  "  nature" 
for  a  conception,  and  to  adopt  this  or 
some  modification  of  it  as  the  solution. 
This  has  been  a  very  prevalent  prac- 
tice in  past  human  proceedings. 
Whenever  some  malformation  or  mal- 
relation,  which  has  come  down  from 
past  ages,  has  been  assailed  by  the 
evolving  sense  of  propriety,  it  has 
been  deemed  an  adequate  defense  to 
remind  would-be  innovators  that  such 
relations  always  have  existed,  are  God- 
ordained,  and  hence  always  will  and 
always  should  exist.  Now,  it  may  be 
that  we  can,  in  our  study  of  the  social 
problem,  obtain  suggestions  from  the 
sociological  and  biological  fields  of 
"nature."  There  is  no  reason  why  we 
should  not,  nor,  on  the  other  hand,  any 
particular  reason  why  we  should.  If 
discrimination  is  used,  and  information 


86         BETTER-WORLD  PHILOSOPHY 

from  this  source  is  not  accepted  with- 
out question,  it  is  perfectly  proper,  and 
may  be  profitable,  to  contemplate  the 
relations  of  living  beings  to  each  other 
during  the  ages  of  unconscious  evolu- 
tion. But  it  should  be  remembered 
that  the  information  derived  from 
"nature"  is  just  as  liable  to  be  valu- 
able in  teaching  how  not  to  do  things 
as  in  teaching  how  to  do  them,  if  not  a 
little  more  so.  There  is  nothing  in- 
fallible about  the  universe  except  the 
infallible  certainty  of  its  laws.  Its  laws 
are  unalterable,  but  they  may  be  be- 
nignant or  they  may  not  be,  and  they 
may  be  wise  or  very  otherwise.  One 
of  the  strangest  delusions  that  ever 
encysted  itself  in  the  human  mind  is 
the  childlike  supposition  that  the  uni- 
verse, outside  of  ourselves,  never  did 
do  anything  and  never  can  do  anything 
unwise  or  unworthy.  It  is  a  delusion 
without  any  foundation  whatever;  and 
the  fact  that  it  clings  to  the  mind  in 
spite  of  the  most  positive  evidence 


THE  SOCIAL   PROBLEM  87 

tending  to  dislodge  it,  shows  how  help- 
less the  mind  is  when  once  hypnotized 
by  an  assumption.  We,  you,  reader, 
and  I,  are  parts  of  nature,  and  are  as 
liable  to  deserve  the  suspicion  of  in- 
fallibility as  any  other  part.  Why  not? 
We  represent  the  boldest  and  most 
elaborate  evolutions.  Why  should  we 
be  the  authors  of  the  most  disreputable 
phenomena?  The  tradition  that  the 
universe  was  originally  constructed  and 
has  ever  since  been,  and  is  to-day, 
guided  by  the  cerebral  processes  of  an 
all-wise  brain,  is  responsible  for  it  all. 
Blinded  by  this  inheritance,  human 
beings  condone  the  most  palpable  de- 
fects in  the  economies  of  the  universe 
— limitations  which,  it  is  not  violent  to 
say,  if  possessed  by  a  fellow  human 
being,  would  be  characterized  as  those 
of  an  imbecile.  Disease  is  contagious, 
and  death  an  unavoidable  necessity. 
Pleasure  is  often  exhausting,  and  life  is 
everywhere  interpolated  with  pain. 
Droughts,  darknesses,  floods,  pesti- 


88         BETTER-WORLD  PHILOSOPHY 

lences,  storms,  and  scourges  harrow  the 
earth  from  one  pole  of  it  to  the  other. 
The  earth  is,  and  always  has  been, 
peopled  by  deformities — creatures  so 
defective  in  their  natures  that  they 
visit  upon  each  other  without  hesitancy 
crimes  and  barbarities  of  the  most  horri- 
ble hue.  These  wretches  are  compelled 
to  pass  their  lives  in  the  midst  of  a  uni- 
verse so  mysterious  and  mighty  that 
the  most  arrogant  of  us  are  helpless  in 
the  crash  and  melee  of  its  tendencies. 
Yet  human  contemplators  look  out 
over  this  dark  and  contentious  chaos 
and  declare  it  to  be  without  spot  or 
blemish.  Imperfections  which  they 
can  not  by  any  possible  torture  induce 
to  support  their  all-wise  hypothesis 
they  complacently  assure  us  would  do 
so  enthusiastically  in  a  wider  generali- 
zation, easily  overlooking  the  fact  that 
rational  judgment  can  not  transcend 
knowledge,  and  the  very  additional 
fact  that  universal  knowledge  might 
reverse  our  judgments  of  the  good,  and 


THE  SOCIAL   PROBLEM  89 

might  convert  the  universe,  instead  of 
into  a  universe  of  goods,  into  a  universe 
of  evils. 

The  universe,  so  far  as  we  can  make 
out,  is  neither  all  wise  nor  all  foolish. 
It  is  both  good  and  bad.  It  maintains 
some  of  the  most  careful  economies 
side  by  side  with  the  most  reckless. 
The  defects  of  the  universe  are  just  as 
apparent  to  him  who  is  not  cowardly 
or  incompetent  as  are  its  excellencies. 
It  is  the  rogue  and  the  ignoramus  who 
argue  in  justification  of  existing  bar- 
barisms that  these  barbarisms  are 
beautiful  because  they  represent  the 
procedures  of  "  nature."  As  a  matter 
of  fact,  all  ways  are  nature's  ways,  the 
unconscious  and  clumsy  as  truly  as  the 
intelligent  and  exquisite.  The  philoso- 
phers of  laissez  faire,  who  would  have 
human  beings  disuse  what  little  intelli- 
gence has,  during  the  past  twenty  mil- 
lions of  years,  been  developed  on  the 
earth,  and  would  have  them  derive 
their  ethics  from  the  regions  of  biolog- 


90         BETTER-WORLD  PHILOSOPHT 

ical  somnambulism,  are  the  philoso- 
phers to  be  heeded  when  humanity 
goes  mad.  It  is  childish  to  assume 
that  we  upper  intelligences  can  not  im- 
prove on  the  unconscious  conditions 
about  us.  It  is  the  very  thing  that  is 
being  done  every  hour  of  time.  The 
whole  effort  of  industry  is  nothing  else 
than  an  effort  to  improve  the  attitudes 
of  the  material  universe.  And  it  is 
just  as  sagacious  to  suppose  that  living 
beings  are  incompetent  to  improve 
their  relations  to  the  inanimate  uni- 
verse as  to  suppose  they  may  not  reform 
and  enhance  their  relations  to  each 
other. 

The  relations  of  living  beings  to  each 
other  observed  among  the  races  (espe- 
cially the  unconscious  races)  of  the 
earth  to-day,  or  as  contemplated  in  the 
paleontologies  of  past  evolutions,  are 
not  such,  I  assert,  as  to  appeal  with 
anything  like  eloquence  to  the  ideal  of 
any  unbiased  mind.  I  will  assert  fur- 
ther, that  the  principle  that  has  oper- 


THE   SOCIAL   PROBLEM  91 

ated  in  the  development  of  life  on  this 
planet,  the  natural  selection  principle, 
and  the  relations  prevalently  estab- 
lished among  living  beings  by  the  ne- 
cessities of  this  principle,  are  irrational 
and  barbarous — that  the  moral  prog- 
ress thus  far  made  by  civilized  beings 
here  on  the  earth  has  been  made. in 
spite  of,  and  in  opposition  to,  this  prin- 
ciple— and  finally,  that  the  great  task 
of  reforming  and  regenerating  the  uni- 
verse and  of  establishing  right  relations 
among  its  inhabitants  consists  in  the 
elimination  of  those  tendencies  im- 
planted in  the  natures  of  living  beings 
by  the  struggle  and  survival  principle. 


EGOISM  AND  ALTRUISM 

In  the  nature  of  living  beings  there 
are  two  elements — that  element  which 
impels  a  living  creature  to  move  in 
behalf  or  in  the  interests  of  itself, 
and  that  which  prompts  or  prevents 
movement  out  of  consideration  for 
others.  The  former  of  these  two  ele- 
ments is  called  egoism,  the  latter, 
altruism. 

When  one  animal  burrows  a  hole  into 
the  earth  or  builds  a  house  on  the  sur- 
face of  the  earth,  and  enhances  it  into 
a  home,  and  goes  out  and  gathers  the 
products  of  plants  and  carries  them  to 
its  home  and  dines  upon  them,  it  per- 
forms acts  of  pure  egoism.  The  acts 
are  performed  wholly  for  itself  and 
altogether  oblivious  of  others.  It  would 
not  act  otherwise  were  it  alone  in  the 
92 


EGOISM  AND   ALTRUISM  93 

universe.  Animals,  solitary  in  their 
nature,  and  the  pioneers  of  human  civ- 
ilization who  dwell  far  away  on  the 
lone  frontiers,  live  lives  more  or  less  of 
this  character.  When  one  animal  goes 
out  from  its  home  and  pillages  the 
granaries  of  another,  and  perhaps  cap- 
tures the  other  animal  and  drags  it  to 
its  home  and  feeds  upon  its  carcass,  it, 
also,  performs  acts  of  egoism;  but  of  a 
more  positive  character.  Its  acts  are 
performed,  not  simply  in  the  interests 
of  itself,  but  with  active  and  injurious 
disregard  for  the  interests  of  its  neigh- 
bor. The  conduct  of  carnivora,  human 
and  non-human,  toward  their  herbivo- 
rous neighbors  illustrates  this  type  of 
egoism.  When  one  animal  living  in 
the  midst  of  plenty  goes  out  and  plun- 
ders the  granaries  of  its  neighbor  or  of 
its  neighbor's  family,  just  for  pastime, 
it  performs  acts  of  extremest  egoism. 
The  acts  are,  in  the  first  place,  in  the 
interests  of  no  organic  need  of  the  ani- 
mal performing  them,  and  they  are,  in 


94         BETTER-WORLD   PHILOSOPHY 

the  second  place,  in  deadly  disregard 
of  the  interests  of  its  fellows.  The 
only  utility  is  the  tickling  of  an  artifi- 
cial and  absurd  instinct  of  animal  num- 
ber one.  The  acts  of  human  sportsmen, 
who  slaughter  other  beings  for  pastime, 
and  the  actsvof  those  immense  klepto- 
maniacs of  human  industry,  who,  ac- 
cording to  established  forms  or  in  spite 
of  them,  acquire  possession  of  the 
products  of  others'  industry,  not  be- 
cause they  need,  but  in  obedience  to  a 
blind  insanity  for  acquisition,  are  acts 
of  this  type  of  egoism. 

These  three  types  of  conduct  may 
be  taken  as  types  of  all  possible  egoism. 
In  the  first  instance,  the  animal  acts  for 
itself  and  oblivious  of  others  ;  in  the 
second  instance,  it  acts  for  self  with 
active  unconcern  for  others  ;  and  in 
the  third  instance,  it  acts  with  violent 
disregard  for  the  lives  and  welfares  of 
others,  in  obedience  to  a  maniacal  and 
superfluous  instinct. 

Corresponding  to  these  three  types 


EGOISM  AND   ALTRUISM  95 

of  egoism,  there  are  three  types  of 
altruism.  When  one  animal  in  abun- 
dance shares  its  abundance  with  another 
in  need,  it  is  an  act  of  the  simplest 
altruism.  It  is  no  deprivation  to  the 
one  and  a  benefit  to  the  other.  Had 
the  rich  man  refused  to  allow  Lazarus 
the  crumbs  that  fell  from  his  banquet 
table,  he  would  have  neglected  to  do 
this  simplest  act  of  altruism.  When 
one  animal  having  no  more  than 
enough  for  itself  shares  its  store  with 
its  needy  neighbors,  it  is  an  act  of 
intenser  altruism.  It  acts  with  partial 
disregard  for  itself  and  with  real  con- 
cern for  others.  When  human  poor, 
who  have  not  enough  or  who  have  just 
enough  to  live  upon,  contribute  to  char- 
itable and  philanthropic  enterprises, 
they  perform  acts  of  this  class  of 
altruism.  This  does  not  apply  to  the 
contributions,  however  dramatic,  of 
millionaires,  for  there  is  no  self- 
denial.  The  intensest  altruism  is  ex- 
hibited when  one  animal  yields  all  it 


96        BETTER-WORLD   PHILOSOPHT 

has  of  life  or  of  possessions  for  others. 
This  is  an  act  wholly  regardless  of 
self  and  altogether  regardful  of  others. 
When  a  mother  bird  or  a  woman  gives 
up  her  life  in  some  terrible  emergency 
in  order  that  by  so  doing  her  children 
may  live,  she  performs  an  act  of  the 
intensest  possible  altruism. 

The  acts  of  living  beings  are,  as  a 
rule,  neither  all  altruism  nor  all  egoism. 
They  consist  generally  of  blends  of  the 
two  elements,  with  a  preponderance 
of  egoism.  It  is  frequently  impossible, 
too,  to  estimate  just  the  amount  of 
each  element  in  a  given  act.  An  act 
which  may  seem  altruistic  may  be  in 
reality  only  sly  and  far-sighted  egoism. 
A  human  being  may  establish  a 
museum  or  a  university,  ostensibly  out 
of  a  desire  to  deepen  and  elaborate 
the  cerebral  convolutions  of  his  fellow 
creatures,  but  really  because  he  dreads 
oblivion.  We  may  do  good  to  our 
enemies,  not  because  we  would  singe 
their  scalps  with  metaphorical  coals, 


EGOISM  AND  ALTRUISM  97 

but  because  we  fear  them.  I  have  seen 
souls  keep  silent  or  preach  strange 
gospels,  because  they  were  "called"  to 
do  it,  they  said,  when  there  was  no 
opportunity  to  doubt  that  it  was  all  in 
the  interests  of  their  larder.  There 
are,  however,  genuine  acts  of  altruism 
as  well  as  unalloyed  deeds  of  egoism. 
Observe  the  difference  in  the  character 
of  their  acts  and  the  difference  in  their 
essential  natures  between  the  herbivora 
and  the  carnivora,  the  philanthropist 
and  the  miser,  the  human  mother  and 
the  ghoul. 

In  a  certain  sense  all  altruism  is 
only  egoism,  for  no  animal  ever  acts 
voluntarily,  that  is,  moves  its  body  in 
company  with  its  will,  except  with  an 
intention  to  satisfy  some  desire  within 
its  own  being.  An  individual  who 
spends  his  life  in  philanthropy,  or 
perishes  for  heresy,  does  so,  if  he  does 
so  at  all,  because  he  desires  to  do  it. 
He  prefers  to  do,  under  the  circum- 
stances, whatever  he  does  do.  The 


98         BETTER-WORLD   PHILOSOPHT 

difference  in  individuals  is  not  in  that 
some  act  according  to  their  own 
inclinations  and  others  do  not.  No 
creature  can  by  any  possible  ruse  escape 
from  its  own  nature.  The  will  is 
always  the  composite  of  the  impulses, 
and  every  being  acts  always  and 
absolutely  in  the  interests  of  its  own 
desires.  The  difference  in  individuals, 
and  it  is  great,  consists  in  the  different 
class  or  character  of  their  desires.  A 
mind  must  be  tolerably  rudimentary 
which  supposes  that  there  is  no  in- 
trinsic difference  between  that  egoism 
called  egoism,  which  drives  an  individ- 
ual to  act  for  himself  regardless  of 
others,  and  that  egoism,  called  altru- 
ism, which  impels  acts  in  behalf  of 
others  and  in  violence  to  self.  There 
is  no  greater  difference  between  Janu- 
ary and  June. 

Where  did  these  two  elements  in  our 
nature,  egoism  and  altruism,  come 
from?  Why  have  human  beings  and 
all  other  beings  known  to  terrestrial 


EGOISM  AND  ALTRUISM  99 

intelligence  these  two  elements,  just 
as  they  are,  in  their  natures?  Why 
have  they  not  all  egoism  or  all  altru- 
ism? Why  have  not  the  beings  in  the 
universe  a  tendency  to  act  each  for  its 
own  individual  self  without  any  par- 
ticle of  regard  for  others?  Or  why  are 
they  not  so  natured  as  to  be  oblivious 
of  self  and  conscious  only  of  those 
around  them?  These  are  profound 
questions  and  questions  of  superlative 
importance  to  the  student  of  social 
culture.  What  the  social  scientist  is 
attempting  to  do,  or  should  be  attempt- 
ing to  do,  is  to  ameliorate  the  relation 
of  associated  beings,  and  this  is  to  be 
accomplished  by  improving  the  con- 
duct or  modifying  the  modes  of  motion 
of  these  beings.  And  it  is  necessary 
in  order  to  modify  these  modes  of 
motion  to  know  where  and  how  these 
modes  of  motion  have  been  acquired. 
It  is  impossible  for  a  physician  to  pre- 
scribe rationally  to  a  pathology  whose 
causation  he  does  not  know. 


100      BETTER-WORLD  PHILOSOPHY 

The  problem  of  the  origin  of  altruism 
and  egoism  is  a  problem  associated 
with  the  problem  of  the  origin  of  good 
and  evil  in  the  world.  Goods  and  evils 
are  the  names  of  two  diverse  kinds  of 
movements  or  things  affecting  living 
beings.  Goods  are  those  movements 
or  things  which  affect  living  beings 
pleasantly  or  advantageously,  and  evils 
produce  pain  or  disadvantage.  Good 
and  evil  may  emanate  from  the  inani- 
mate universe,  and  consist  in  those 
blessings  and  misfortunes  coming  upon 
living  beings  from  their  inanimate 
environments,  or  they  may  originate 
in  living  beings  themselves,  and  consist 
in  those  kindnesses  and  crimes  living 
beings  visit  upon  each  other.  Now, 
the  good  originating  in  living  beings, 
the  virtues  and  the  graces  of  life,  is 
altruistic  in  its  nature,  and  the  evil,  the 
crimes  and  improprieties,  is  egoistic. 
Good  is  popularly  synonymous  with 
altruism,  because  the  altruistic  is  the 
neglected  element,  the  element  need- 


EGOISM  AND  ALTRUISM  IOI 

ing  emphasis  and  cultivation.  The 
problem  of  the  origin  of  egoism  and 
altruism,  therefore,  is  the  problem  of 
the  origin  of  that  part  of  good  and 
evil  originating  among  living  beings. 

The  theological  cosmology,  which 
looks  upon  the  phenomena  of  the  uni- 
verse as  being  caused  specifically,  or  in 
a  general  way,  by  personality,  sustains 
the  theory  that  the  good  and  bad 
phenomena  in  the  movements  of  living 
beings,  like  the  beneficent  and  un- 
beneficent  phenomena  of  the  inanimate, 
are  due  to  two  diverse  classes  of  per- 
sonalities. Among  the  simpler  minded 
races  good  and  bad  spirits  are  sup- 
posed to  take  possession  of  individuals, 
dethrone  their  personalities,  and  com- 
pel conduct  in  accordance  with  the 
natures  of  the  usurpers.  By  exorcism 
these  spirits  are  cast  out  and  compelled 
to  move  about  from  one  habitat  to 
another.  Among  the  more  mature 
races  these  two  classes  of  spirits  are 
evolved  into  two  individual  personali- 


102      SETTER-WORLD  PHILOSOPHT 

ties,  opposite  in  character,  and  rivals, 
who  interfere  in  one  way  or  another 
with  the  destinies  of  individuals  and 
nations.  And  such  expressions  as 
"  full  of  the  old  Nick,"  "  work  of  the 
devil,"  "divine  help  and  guidance," 
"  strength  and  inspiration  from  above," 
"  providential  interference,"  and  the 
like,  heard  daily  everywhere,  indicate 
that  demonology  lives,  not  alone  in  far 
away  ages  and  half-awake  provinces  of 
the  earth,  but  in  the  here  and  now. 

Demonology  in  all  its  aspects  is  a 
delusion.  No  being  was  ever  "pos- 
sessed" in  any  degree  by  any  demon 
or  other  personality  other  than  his 
own.  All  the  diabolism  manifest  in  the 
movements  of  any  being  is  his  own  or 
that  of  his  ancestors,  and  no  divinity 
ever  glitters  from  the  soul  of  any  crea- 
ture save  that  which  is  intrinsic.  And 
there  is  no  difference  in  the  believabil- 
ity  of  the  more  primitive  conception 
and  the  more  educated.  It  is  just  as 
reasonable  to  suppose  that  some  pecu- 


EGOISM  AND  ALTRUISM  103 

liar  old  woman  is  the  irresponsible 
emissary  of  a  witch  as  to  believe  that 
the  skeptical  suspicions  of  a  Christian 
are  the  inarticulate  whisperings  of  the 
devil.  The  literal  casting  out  of  evil 
spirits  and  their  actual  entrance  into 
startled  swine  herds  are  no  more  absurd 
to  a  mind  unaccustomed  to  supernatural 
vagary  than  the  modern  religious 
occultism  in  which  the  natures  of  beings 
are  supposed  to  be  revolutionized  by 
the  intangible  activities  of  an  extremely 
sublimated  ghost.  Witchcraft,  sorcery, 
demoniacal  possessions,  theurgy,  and 
the  like,  are  the  untutored  progenitors 
of  the  superstitions  of  civilized  peoples, 
that  the  conduct  of  human  beings, 
individually  and  collectively,  is  inter- 
fered with,  more  or  less  seriously,  by 
prevailing  deities. 

Mr.  Kidd,  an  Englishman,  has  writ- 
ten a  book  on  "  Social  Evolution," 
which  has  had  a  rather  wide  and  sen- 
sational sale.  The  author  of  this  book, 
while  allowing  to  the  egoistic  element 


104      BETTER-WORLD  PHILOSOPHY 

in  the  nature  of  living  beings  (in  the 
nature  rather  of  human  beings,  for  he 
is  too  clannish  and  too  rudimentary  an 
animal  to  consider  any  other  than  his 
own  species  in  his  philosophy) — while 
allowing  a  perfectly  natural  and 
rational  origin  to  the  egoistic  element 
of  our  natures,  conceiving  it  to  have 
been  evolved  here  on  the  earth,  he 
considers  altruism  an  ultra-mundane 
product,  which  has  been  surreptitiously 
injected  into  our  natures  by  some 
meddler  beyond  our  atmosphere.  The 
author  of  this  book  is  rational  just  to 
the  extent  of  one-half.  And  this  is 
why  his  book  has  received  such 
immense  consideration.  If  he  had 
been  as  rational  in  his  explanation  of 
the  origin  of  altruism  as  he  was  in  his 
account  of  egoism,  his  volume  would 
not  have  gone  beyond  his  bailiwick. 
He  played  to  the  theological  galleries, 
whether  intentionally  or  inadvertently, 
and  the  amazing  attention  the  book 
has  received  has  been  due,  rather  than 


EGOISM  AND  ALTRUISM  105 

to  any  intrinsic  usefulness,  to  the 
enthusiasm  with  which  a  drowning 
philosophy  utilizes  a  straw. 

The  egoism  of  our  natures  is  not 
more  mundane  than  is  the  altruism. 
Both  were  born  beneath  the  same  blue 
that  to-day  bends  above  them.  Both 
are  the  products  of  evolutional  pro- 
cesses which  have  gone  on  and  are  still 
going  on  here  on  this  planet.  It  is  just 
as  sagacious  to  suppose  that  the  bones 
and  bowels  of  living  beings  have  re- 
sulted from  natural  biological  pro- 
cesses, while  the  brain  and  its  phenom- 
ena are  the  result  of  supernatural 
agencies,  as  to  suppose  that  the  egoism 
of  our  natures  is  mundane  and  the 
altruism  celestial.  Not  only  our  dis- 
positions and  our  bodies,  with  all  their 
charms  and  infirmities,  but  every  pos- 
sible thing  apprehended  or  conceived 
by  mind  is  the  result  of  evolution.  All 
the  languages,  laws,  governments,  re- 
ligions, and  industries,  of  animals  ; 
plants,  with  all  their  styles  of  stem, 


Io6      BETTER-WORLD  PHILOSOPHr 

fruit,  and  foliage  ;  the  mannerisms  of 
molecules  and  atoms  ;  all  the  peculiari- 
ties of  oceans,  continents,  and  atmos- 
pheres ;  the  idiosyncrasies  of  comets, 
systems,  and  abysses  ;  all  are  the  result 
of  tendencies  that  have  intermeddled 
from  eternity. 

The  nature  of  any  creature,  that  is, 
the  tendencies  with  which  it  comes  into 
the  world,  as  will  be  more  fully  shown 
in  the  chapter  on  "  The  Derivation  of 
the  Natures  of  Living  Beings,"  is  the 
result  of  its  environment,  or  the  envi- 
ronment of  its  species,  up  to  date. 
The  egoistic  and  altruistic  elements  in 
human  nature  are,  therefore,  the  accu- 
mulated results  of  the  experience  of 
the  hominine  species  in  its  phyletic 
pilgrimage  from  the  unicellular  forms 
to  the  present.  This  pilgrimage  has 
been  long  and  sanguinary.  There  are 
on  the  earth  to-day  several  hundreds  of 
thousands  of  species  of  animals;  and 
it  is  estimated  that  three  times  as  many 
species  have  perished  from  the  earth 


EGOISM  AND  ALTRUISM  107 

as  to-day  live  upon  it.  It  has,  there- 
fore, required  millions  of  species  of 
beings  (perhaps  two  or  three  millions) 
to  come  into  existence  and  struggle,  in 
order  that  the  zoological  process  might 
attain  its  present  status.  Nature  is 
more  fecund  than  provident.  More  life 
is  brought  into  existence  than  can  pos- 
sibly continue  to  exist.  Struggle  for 
existence  and  survival  of  the  fittest 
result.  The  defective  and  the  indif- 
ferent are  eliminated  and  the  strong 
and  the  active-natured  survive.  It  has 
been  in  this  simple,  horrible  manner 
that  men,  after  unknown  generations 
and  infinite  misery,  have  been  made 
out  of  monads.  Egoism  is  simply  that 
trait  of  character  which  has  been  fit- 
test in  the  great  battle  of  life.  Those 
individuals  who  have  been  intensely 
devoted  to  themselves  have  survived 
and  perpetuated  themselves  genera- 
tion after  generation,  while  the  indif- 
ferent have  gone  down. 

All  beings,  therefore,  that  have  come 


108      BETTER-WORLD  PHILOSOPHT 

up  thru  struggle  and  continue  in  strug- 
gle have  an  intense  desire  to  emerge 
from  the  ample  end  of  the  horn,  simply 
because  those  of  their  ancestors  who 
preferred  the  little  end  of  the  horn  or 
were  indifferent  about  it,  perished  with- 
out progeny.  If  there  had  been  during 
the  process  of  life  evolution  a  scarcity 
of  individuals  instead  of  a  redundance; 
if  it  had  been  best  for  the  individual 
and  necessary  to  the  life  process  that 
each  should  accept  an  interest  in  his 
fellows,  and  those  individuals  who  did 
this  most  assiduously  from  generation 
to  generation  had  survived  and  propa- 
gated, then  there  would  have  been 
developed  beings  radically  different  in 
disposition  from  those  on  the  earth  to- 
day— beings  to  whom  it  would  have 
been  as  natural  to  act  in  the  interests 
of  others  as  it  is  for  actual  beings  to 
act  in  the  interest  of  themselves — be- 
ings whose  most  prominent  propensi- 
ties would  have  been  altruistic  and 
whose  noblest  and  most  difficult  virtue 


EGOfSM  AND   ALTRUISM  109 

would  have  been  selfishness — beings 
needing  moral  injunctions  like  these: 
"  Love  yourself  as  you  love  your  neigh- 
bor," "  It  is  more  blessed  to  receive 
than  to  give,"  and  "  Do  not  do  to  your- 
self that  which  others  do  not  like 
when  done  to  them." 

Altruism  has  grown  up  in  the  nature 
of  living  beings  in  more  ways  than 
one.  The  most  genuine  altruism  in 
the  universe  is  that  seen  in  the  regard 
of  the  parent  for  its  offspring.  This 
altruism  extends  with  greater  or  less 
sincerity  thruout  the  biological  series. 
The  offspring  of  all  animals  are  com- 
paratively helpless,  and  it  has  been 
very  prevalently  necessary  to  protect 
them  from  tribulations.  This  protec- 
tive function,  altho  among  some  ani- 
mals it  is  performed  by  the  male,  has 
been  developed  chiefly  in  the  maternal 
parent,  the  mother  being,  in  the  ungre- 
garious  races  in  which  this  instinct  had 
its  genesis,  the  only  one  present  at  and 
participating  in  the  birth  act.  Those 


HO      BETTER-WORLD  PHILOSOPHT 

mothers,  therefore,  who  have  been  in- 
terested in  their  infants,  and  those  in 
whom  this  instinct  has  been  strongest, 
have  been  continually  the  ones  who 
have  successfully  left  offspring.  The 
fact  that  this  mother  instinct  sustains 
such  vital  relation  to  the  destinies  of 
the  life  process  itself  explains  the  fact 
that  it  is  so  unfailing  and  so  nearly 
universal. 

It  is,  as  has  been  said,  the  most  gen- 
uine altruism  in  the  universe,  mothers, 
both  human  and  non-human,  not  infre- 
quently manifesting  for  their  children 
a  higher  regard  than  they  do  for  them- 
selves. Mother  bears  have  been  known 
to  allow  themselves  to  be  murdered  in 
order,  if  possible,  to  save  the  babies 
by  their  side.  Mother  birds  wail  with 
apprehension  when  there  is  even  a 
suspicion  that  their  little  ones  are  in 
danger.  Mother  mice  manifest,  for 
the  safety  of  their  endangered  dar- 
lings, all  the  anxiety  and  ingenuity  of 
human  parents.  Every  human  child 


EGOISM  AND   ALTRUISM  III 

knows  that  there  is  no  one  in  the  wide 
universe  who  loves  him  like  his  own 
mother,  no  one  who  will  stand  by  him 
when  all  others  have  forsaken  him,  no 
one  who  shares  his  joys  and  his  sor- 
rows so  sincerely,  no  one  who  is  so 
ready  to  forget  his  ingratitude  and  so 
willing  to  forgive,  as  that  being  who 
went  down  in  pain  to  give  him  breath. 
Mother  love  is  one  of  the  beautiful 
things  of  earth.  But,  like  other  beau- 
tiful things  on  this  melancholy  sphere, 
it  is  not  eternal.  From  its  very  nature 
it  is  destined  to  grow  feebler  as  life 
grows  more  fraternal.  Already  in  the 
most  social  communities,  where  the 
conditions  of  life  are  more  hospitable, 
where  parental  disregard  is  balanced 
by  the  solicitude  of  the  community, 
and  waifs  and  foundlings  are  cared  for 
by  the  State,  the  maternal  instinct  is 
more  or  less  anachronistic.  Like  the 
instinct  for  hunting  and  fishing,  and 
the  nomadic  instinct  of  civilized  life, 
like  the  instinct  which  impels  peaceful 


112      BETTER-WORLD   PHILOSOPHT 

and  industrial  peoples  to  flavor  all 
their  games  and  pastimes  with  strug- 
gle, and  like  that  cock-like  instinct 
called  ambition  (the  instinct  to  get  on 
the  heads  of  our  fellow-men  to  crow), 
the  maternal  instinct  continues  by  the 
inertia  acquired  in  ages  when  it  was 
more  nearly  indispensable  to  the  life 
process. 

Excepting  reproduction,  the  very 
earliest  altruism,  that  which  appears 
lowest  in  the  scale  of  being  and  hence 
was  probably  the  first  to  appear  upon 
the  earth,  is  seen  in  those  simple  co- 
operative colonies  of  unicellular  forms 
clinging  to  the  rocks  of  the  sea  bottom. 
These  colonies  are  the  prophecies  and 
precursors  of  that  sublimest  of  all 
altruism,  the  multicellular  animal.  For 
it  must  be  remembered  that  you, 
reader,  and  I  are  aggregates  of  unicel- 
lular forms,  which  in  the  morning  of 
life  were  separate  and  independent 
organisms  sprawling  about  without  any 
definite  ambitions  among  the  sea 


EGOISM  AND   ALTRUISM  113 

depths,  but  which,  in  order  better  to 
meet  the  emergencies  of  their  environ- 
ment, huddled  themselves  into  colo- 
nies, grew  closer  and  closer  together, 
and  as  wholes  more  and  more  differ- 
entiated and  integrated,  until  finally, 
as  a  sequel  of  the  whole  matter,  we 
have  to-day  that  which  you  and  I  see, 
whatever  it  is,  when  we  look  in  a 
mirror. 

Those  forms  of  altruism,  like  patriot- 
ism and  other  similar  feelings  of 
fraternity  existing  among  the  members 
of  tribes,  races,  clans,  and  classes,  but 
not  extending  beyond  the  class  or 
tribe,  originated,  like  egoism,  in  war. 
Unlike  egoism,  however,  which  has 
been  developed  by  struggle  among 
individuals,  this  aspect  of  altruism  has 
been  the  result  of  struggle  among 
aggregates  of  individuals.  It  has  grown 
out  of  the  cooperation  of  individuals 
in  tribes  and  classes  against  their  co- 
operating enemies.  It  springs  from 
sameness  of  interest.  The  highest 


114      BETTER-WORLD  PHILOSOPHT 

interests  of  individuals  were  found  in 
the  welfare  of  the  aggregate,  for  it  was 
thru  the  aggregate  only  that  the  indi- 
vidual was  able  to  maintain  himself. 
Individuals  learned  to  help  each  other 
and  to  stand  by  each  other  against 
their  common  enemies,  because  it  was 
the  only  way  in  which  they  could  stand. 
Those  tribes  and  nations  and  races 
that  have  had  strongest  this  feeling  of 
fraternity  have  survived,  while  the  less 
fraternal  have  gone  down. 

Industrial  altruism,  seen  in  the  divi- 
sion of  labor  and  other  forms  of  co- 
operation arising  out  of  the  great  task 
of  subjugating  the  inanimate  universe, 
is  analogous  in  its  essence  and  origin 
to  that  cooperation  against  enemies 
engendered  in  ages  of  militancy. 

Out  of  these  forms  of  altruism,  if 
they  are  altruism,  which  prompt  indi- 
viduals to  help  each  other  because  they 
thereby  serve  themselves  and  to  give 
gifts  out  of  a  desire  to  receive  gifts  in 
return,  has  grown,  thru  sympathy,  that 


EGOISM  AND  ALTRUISM  115 

more  positive  and  difficult  altruism 
called  benevolence.  That  feeling 
which  prompts  service  in  return  for 
service,  or  in  return  for  expected 
service,  is  very  akin  to  that  which 
prompts  .service  without  expectations. 
Sympathy  is  consciousness  of  kind. 
It  is  the  putting  of  one's  self  in  the 
place  of  another,  the  projection  of 
one's  own  personality  into  the  periph- 
ery of  another  and  sharing  or  simu- 
lating by  means  of  the  imagination  the 
emotions  of  that  other.  Sympathy  is 
the  lily  of  the  imagination.  It  is  the 
weeping  with  those  who  weep  and  the 
rejoicing  with  those  who  are  glad.  It 
is  found  only  in  animals  of  superfine 
sensibilities  and  peculiar  enlighten- 
ment. It  is  more  or  less  involuntary, 
and,  like  all  altruism,  has  its  egoistic 
aspect.  A  being  so  constructed  as  to 
be  uneasy  and  unhappy  in  the  presence 
of  misery  and  joyous  in  the  presence 
of  joy  seeks  to  terminate  the  one  and 
perpetuate  the  other  out  of  consider- 


Il6       BETTER-WORLD  PHILOSOPHY 

ation  for  his  own  feelings.  The  in- 
convenience of  relieving  his  fellows  in 
distress  is  less  than  the  discomfort  to 
himself  of  their  continued  distress. 

Sympathy,  consciousness  of  kind, 
means  simply  the  realization  or  the 
conscious  recognition  by  living  beings 
of  the  kinship  of  content.  A  human 
being  unconscious  of  kind,  an  un- 
sympathetic and  inhuman  person,  is 
one  who  is  likely  to  assume  that  his 
conscious  states  are  sui  generis,  that 
they  are  more  precious  and  intense 
than,  and  intrinsically  different  from, 
those  of  others — one  who  realizes  that 
an  injured  sensory  is  a  savage  thing  in 
his  own  organism,  but  who  does  not 
suppose  it  to  be  anything  of  the  kind 
when  it  hangs  to  the  brain  of  a  Hotten- 
tot or  a  horse.  Why  do  the  human 
rich  treat  the  human  poor  with  such 
inconsideration?  Why  do  they  allow 
or  compel  them  to  remain  disinherited 
and  crushed  while  they  themselves  loll 
in  superfluous  wealth?  Because  there 


EGOISM  AND  ALTRUISM  117 

is  inadequate  consciousness  of  kind. 
Opulent  employers  look  upon  their 
employes  as  a  set  of  fibrous  wretches 
without  manhood  or  aspiration.  They 
have  no  real  realization  that  those 
poor,  hard-working  fellows  have  the 
same  kind  of  emotions — the  same  love 
for  their  wives,  the  same  solicitude  for 
their  children,  and  the  same  feelings  in 
disdain — as  they  themselves.  When 
a  dozen  dogs  get  after  a  little  harm- 
less hare,  why  do  the  whole  human 
family  applaud  the  dogs?  Simply 
because  the  human  family  do  not  put 
themselves  in  the  place  of  the  hare. 
There  is  no  sympathy,  no  conscious- 
ness of  kind,  no  realization  that  the 
emotions  experienced  by  that  valiant 
little  creature  struggling  to  avoid  the 
mouths  of  those  instinct-maddened 
dogs  are  similar  to  the  emotions  they 
themselves  would  experience  in  an 
identical  predicament. 

There  is  a  kinship  of  all  beings,  for 
the  life  process  has  sprung  from  one 


Ii8      BETTER-WORLD  PHILOSOPHT 

source  and  evolved  according  to  one 
fundamental  principle.  Consciousness 
of  kind,  therefore,  the  ability  to  partici- 
pate in  the  psychic  states  of  others,  is 
cultivated  by  a  knowledge  of  the 
nature  and  content  of  those  around  us, 
and  anything  which  tends  to  increase 
or  complete  our  knowledge  of  others, 
as  identity  of  language,  association,  or 
ambition,  tends  to  intensify  conscious- 
ness of  kind,  and  whatever  limits  or 
prevents  knowledge  of  others  tends  to 
cause  us  to  consider  them  of  a  differ- 
ent order  or  kind  from  ourselves. 
Foreigners  are  and  have  been  in  all 
ages  looked  upon  as  a  different  and  as 
a  far  less  considerable  order  of  beings; 
because  foreigners  are  strangers,  curi- 
ous in  form,  custom,  and  address,  and 
unable  to  speak  the  language  of  the 
land  to  which  they  are  alien.  The 
Romans,  Greeks,  Jews,  and  others  con- 
sidered all  who  did  not  belong  to  their 
particular  swarm  as  barbarians,  fit 
chiefly  for  slavery  and  contempt;  and 


EGOISM  AND  ALTRUISM  119 

the  most  depraved  tribe  in  the  least 
luminous  regions  of  the  earth  to-day 
pity  the  rest  of  mankind,  and  believe 
with  all  the  energy  of  their  rude  con- 
sciousnesses that  they  are  the  noblest 
and  most  important  people  in  the  uni- 
verse. Why  are  non-human  beings 
ostracized  and  treated  by  humans  with 
no  consideration  save  as  they  admin- 
ister to  selfish  human  ends?  Whence 
the  doctrine  that  non-human  species 
were  made  for  the  hominine  species, 
and  that  there  is  no  logic  or  sanity  in 
their  existence  save  as  they  feed  or 
slave  for  their  human  tyrants?  Be- 
cause they  are  dumb,  that  is,  because 
their  language  is  not  understood  by 
human  minds,  and  because  they  are 
wild,  that  is,  because  they  are  for  the 
most  part  unassociated  with  human 
animals,  and  because  the  civilized  con- 
sciousness, which  is  barely  able  to 
realize  the  kinship  of  human  beings,  is 
yet  too  feeble  and  rudimentary  to 
comprehend  the  solidarity  of  all  beings. 


120       BETTER-WORLD  PHILOSOPHY 

Inconsideration  by  human  beings  to- 
ward the  rest  of  sentients  is  an  aspect 
of  that  vast  unconsciousness  which 
taught  that  blacks  were  made  for 
whites,  females  for  males,  and  "bar- 
barians "  for  Romans. 

Longitudinal  or  serial  altruism,  that 
is,  altruism  toward  the  generations  in 
future  time,  arises,  like  lateral  or  space 
altruism,  thru  sympathy,  that  is,  thru 
the  imagination.  The  living  sustain  a 
vital  relation  to  the  unborn.  Every 
one  who  recognizes  and  shows  any 
regard  for  this  relation,  and  there  are 
very  few  who  do,  does  so  by  putting 
himself  in  the  place  of  the  unborn 
billions,  and  by  anticipation  sharing 
their  welfare  and  ill-fare. 

The  evolution  of  consciousness,  in 
its  ethical  import,  means  the  extension 
in  both  space  and  time  of  the  con- 
sciousness of  similarity.  Starting  from 
individual  egoism,  consciousness  has 
extended,  vividly  or  vaguely,  from  in- 
dividual self  to  family,  and  from  family 


EGOISM  AND  ALTRUISM  121 

to  clan,  and  from  clan  to  tribe,  and 
from  tribe  to  nation,  and  from  nation 
to  race,  and  from  race  to  species,  and 
from  species  to  kingdom.  This  ampli- 
fication has  gone  on  and  is  still  going 
on  in  both  space  and  time.  Universal 
consciousness  of  similarity  contemplates 
all  the  beings  in  space  and  all  those  to  be 
in  time. 


THE   PREPONDERANCE  OF 
EGOISM 

The  sad  and  unmistakable  thing  one 
observes  in  looking  out  over  the  uni- 
verse of  conscious  existence  is  the  pre- 
ponderance of  egoism,  the  intense  and 
almost  maniacal  regard  with  which  be- 
ings, as  a  rule,  act  in  behalf  of  them- 
selves, and  the  lukewarm  consideration, 
on  the  whole,  allowed  to  others.  This 
fact  needs  little  argumentation.  Hu- 
man beings  need  simply  to  analyze 
their  own  consciousnesses,  and  to  ob- 
serve the  conduct  of  the  conscious- 
nesses about  them,  to  be  overwhelmed 
with  its  evidence.  All  species  of  ani- 
mals, from  the  octopus  punctatus,  which 
sometimes  includes  in  its  terrible  em- 
braces protesting  humans,  to  the  author 
of  the  Synthetic  Philosophy,  whose  re- 


PREPONDERANCE   OF  EGOISM       123 

morseless  cosmology  befits  him  to  feed 
on  heifer  and  fish,  exemplify  this  fright- 
ful fact.  Among  individuals  of  the 
same  aggregate  there  is  consideration 
for  each  other,  but  between  different 
cliques  and  species  there  is  the  most 
violent  inamity.  All  over  the  non- 
human  world,  with  few  exceptions, 
each  being  seeks  the  satisfaction  of  his 
own  desires,  if  not  with  positive  disre- 
gard for  the  happiness  and  misery  of 
the  rest  of  the  universe,  at  least  with 
sincere  unconcern.  There  is  no  cour- 
tesy, sympathy,  or  amenity  there — a 
cold,  heartless,  implacable  world  of 
strangers.  The  chief  activities  of  be- 
ings, both  human  and  non-human,  are 
put  forth,  directly  or  indirectly,  for  the 
purpose  of  procuring  food.  The  sup- 
pression, entire  or  partial,  of  one  being 
by  another  for  nutritive  purposes  is, 
therefore,  the  form  of  the  most  frequent 
and  excessive  egoism.  The  lowly  forms 
of  life — the  worms,  echinoderms,  mol- 
lusks,  and  the  like — are,  for  the  most 


124      BETTER-WORLD  PHILOSOPHT 

part,  vegetarians.  So,  also,  are  preva- 
lently the  insects,  birds,  rodents,  and 
ungulates.  These  creatures  are  not,  as 
a  rule,  aggressively  harmful  to  each 
other,  chiefly  indifferent.  But  upon 
these  inoffensive  races  feed  with  re- 
morseless maw  the  reptilia,  the  insec- 
tivora,  and  the  carnivora.  These 
being-eaters  cause  to  the  earth-world 
its  bloodiest  experiences.  It  is  their 
nature  (established  organically  by  long 
selection,  or,  as  in  the  case  of  man,  ac- 
quired tentatively)  to  subsist,  not  on 
the  kingdom  of  the  plant,  the  natural 
and  primal  storehouse  of  animal  en- 
ergy, but  on  the  skeletons  and  sensi- 
bilities of  their  neighbors  and  friends. 
The  serpent  dines  on  the  sparrow  and 
the  sparrow  ingulfs  the  gnat;  the  tiger 
slays  the  jungle-fowl  and  the  coyote 
plunders  the  lamb;  the  seal  subsists  on 
fish  and  the  ursus  marititmts  subsists 
on  seal;  the  ant  enslaves  the  aphidae 
and  man  eats  and  enslaves  what  can 
not  get  away  from  him.  Life  riots  on 


PREPONDERANCE   OF  EGOISM       125 

life — tooth  and  talon,  beak  and  paw. 
It  is  a  sickening  contemplation,  but  life 
everywhere,  in  its  aspect  of  activity,  is 
largely  made  up  of  the  struggle  by  one 
being  against  another  for  existence — 
of  the  effort  by  one  being  to  circum- 
vent, subjugate,  or  destroy  another, 
and  of  the  counter  effort  to  reciprocate 
or  escape. 

The  human  species,  because  it  is 
more  powerful  and  more  conceited 
than  any  other,  is  the  most  egoistic  tow- 
ard other  species  of  all  the  species 
that  live.  The  gorilla,  that  formidable 
and  noble  ancestor  of  man  who  wan- 
ders with  his  family  thru  the  sylvan 
silences  of  his  native  continent  feeding 
on  the  fruits  that  fall  from  the  arms  of 
the  forest,  is  gastronomically  a  much 
more  exemplary  individual  than  his 
struttish  and  more  strategic  descendant. 
Human  beings  have  been  sufficiently 
clever  and  sufficiently  devoted  to  each 
other  to  evolve  into  the  masters  of  the 
earth;  but,  instead  of  converting  them- 


126      BETTER-WORLD  PHILOSOPHT 

selves  into  preceptors  for  the  conquered 
races,  they  have  become  the  butchers 
of  the  universe.  Instead  of  becoming 
the  models  and  school-masters  of  the 
world  in  which  they  have  outstripped, 
and  striving  to  repair  the  clumsy  natures 
and  regulate  the  straying  feet  of  those 
by  means  of  whom  they  have  been 
lifted  into  distinction,  they  have  become 
colossal  pedants  and  assassins,  pro- 
claiming themselves  the  pets  and  gods 
of  creation,  and  teaching  each  other 
that  other  races  are  mere  fixtures  to 
furnish  food  and  amusement  for  them- 
selves. They  inculcate  as  a  rule  of 
conduct,  and  they  preach  it  valiantly, 
that  each  should  act  upon  others  as  he 
himself  .would  wish  to  be  acted  upon. 
This  ideal  of  social  rectitude  has  been 
taught  by  the  sages  of  the  species  for 
more  than  two  thousand  years.  But 
with  miserable  pusillanimity  they  con- 
fine its  application  to  the  members  of 
their  own  species.  No  non-human  is 
too  innocent  or  too  interesting  or  too 


PREPONDERANCE   OF  EGOISM      127 

wonderful  to  escape  the  most  frightful 
humiliations,  if  by  those  humiliations 
human  comfort  or  human  amusement 
or  human  whim  is  in  any  way  whatever 
garnished.  Look  at  the  horse  !  No 
nobler  or  more  beautiful  creature  is 
found  in  all  the  animal  realm.  A  mar- 
vel of  strength,  speed,  and  splendor ! 
The  most  useful  and  consummate  asso- 
ciate of  man!  What  wonderful  possi- 
bilities of  reciprocity!  Man  takes  the 
horse  from  the  plains  where  he  is  ex- 
posed to  the  inclemencies  of  weather, 
the  contingencies  of  food,  and  the 
blunders  of  his  own  childlike  nature. 
He  gives  him  regular  meals,  pleasant 
shelter,  intellectual  surroundings,  and 
a  home.  The  horse  in  return  gives 
man  the  benefit  of  his  superior  strength 
and  speed,  bearing  man  and  his  bur- 
dens, and  supplementing  in  a  thousand 
ways  the  inadequate  energies  of  his 
mentor.  These  are  the  possibilities, 
the  ideal  —  gigantic  strength  supple- 
menting superior  wisdom.  Beautiful 


128      BETTER-WORLD  PHILOSOPHY 

reciprocity!  What  are  the  actualities? 
Sad  indeed.  The  horse  is  not  an  asso- 
ciate, but  a  slave.  He  has  no  rights, 
and  is  seldom  suspected  of  being  enti- 
tled to  feelings  or  vanities  at  all.  He 
is  treated  as  if  he  had  merely  existence 
and  usefulness.  He  is  neglected,  over- 
burdened and  overworked,  beaten, 
insulted,  starved,  maimed,  misunder- 
stood, deprived  of  leisure  and  liberty, 
unconsidered,  doomed  to  an  environ- 
ment out  of  which  has  been  drained 
every  element  calculated  to  promote 
his  happiness  and  intelligence  and  per- 
petuate his  nobility  and  beauty.  He  is 
a  mere  suggestion  of  the  might-have- 
been.  The  regal  neck  is  wilted,  the 
splendid  flanks  are  lean  and  drawn,  the 
ambitious  face  is  sad.  The  proud  gal- 
loper of  the  plains,  the  companion  of 
the  winds,  bearing  fire  in  his  nostrils 
and  thunder  in  his  hoofs,  has  become  a 
soured,  impoverished,  broken-hearted 
but  faithful  wreck.  The  stars  of  heaven 
never  looked  down  on  a  more  pitiful 


PREPONDERANCE   OF  EGOISM       129 

sight  than  that  of  a  horse,  after  having 
drudged  faithfully  all  his  days  in  the 
service  of  his  lord,  cast  out  in  his  help- 
less old  age  to  wander  and  perish. 

Our  own  happiness  and  that  of  our 
species  are  believed  to  be  so  much 
more  important  than  that  of  others, 
that  we  sacrifice  without  scruple  the 
most  sacred  interests  of  others  in  order 
that  our  own  may  be  fastidiously 
trimmed.  Even  for  a  tooth  or  a 
feather  to  wear  on  our  vanity,  marau- 
ders are  sent  thru  the  forests  of  the 
earth  to  ravage  and  depopulate  them. 
•Beautiful  beings  which  fill  the  woods 
with  song  and  beauty  are  compelled  to 
sprawl,  lifeless  and  disheveled,  on  the 
skulls  of  unconscionable  sillies.  Crimi- 
nal and  inconvenient  races  are  exter- 
minated with  eager  and  superfluous 
violence.  Thousands  of  innocent  and 
helpless  souls  are  caught  up  and  carried 
by  unfeeling  emissaries  into  foul  dun- 
geons, and  there  doomed  by  ghoulish 
clowns  of  science  to  the  most  protracted, 


130      BETTER-WORLD  PHILOSOPHY 

useless,  and  damning  victimizations. 
Millions  of  the  most  sensitive  and 
lovely  organisms,  all  palpitating  with 
life  and  full  of  nerves,  are  hourly 
assassinated,  flayed,  and  haggled,  and 
their  twitching  fragments  hauled  away 
to  be  ungracefully  interred  in  the 
stomachic  sepulchers  of  men  and 
women  who  have  the  insolence  to 
murmur  intimacies  to  him  who  in 
mountain  thunders  said,  "Thou  shalt 
not  kill!"  The  very  energy  with 
which  men  preach  peace,  justice,  and 
mercy  is  obtained  by  stripping  the 
bones  and  tearing  out  the  vitals  of 
their  fellow-beings.  Holy  days,  days 
above  all  others  when  it  seems  men's 
minds  would  be  bent  on  compassion, 
are  farces  of  gluttony  and  ferocity. 
Unfeeling  ruffians  cowardly  shoot  down 
defenceless  birds,  or  prowl  the  country 
in  rival  squads,  massacring  every  liv- 
ing creature  that  is  not  able  to  escape 
them,  and  for  no  higher  or  humaner 
purpose  than  just  to  see  who  can  kill  the 


PREPONDERANCE   OF  EGOISM       131 

most!  This  is  egoism  unparalleled  on 
the  face  of  the  earth.  No  species  of 
animal  except  man  plunges  to  such 
depths  of  atrocity.  It  is  bad  enough, 
in  all  conscience,  for  one  being  to  sup- 
press another  in  order  to  tear  it  to 
pieces  and  swallow  it;  but  when  such 
outrages  are  perpetrated  by  organized 
packs,  just  for  pastime,  it  becomes  an 
enormity  beyond  characterization.  The 
insectivora,  the  carnivora,  and  the  rep- 
tilia  are-  cruel.  It  is  fearful  to  con- 
template the  enormous  wickedness 
perpetrated  on  the  less  offensive  races 
by  these  relentless  brutes.  But  the 
egoism  of  the  hominine  species  toward 
the  other  species  is  the  most  cruel  and 
extravagant  in  the  universe.  Non- 
human  murderers  are  ruthless,  but  even 
serpents  and  hyenas  do  not  extermi- 
nate for  sport. 

Oh,  universe!  Pitiful  spectacle!  Ag- 
gregation of  tragedy,  somnambulism, 
inhumanity,  terrorism,  and  death!  It 
makes  one  long  to  seal  up  his  sensibili- 


132       BETTER-WORLD  PHILOSOPHT 

ties  and  leap  out  into  the  gulfs  and  be 
swallowed  up.  The  handiwork  of  an 
all-wise  biophilist?  Rhapsody  of  an 
idiot!  Gods?  No!  The  monstrous 
kindergarten  of  an  idle-pated  knave! 
A  satanic  prank!  The  surreptitious 
handiwork  of  an  ass!  A  universe  is, 
indeed,  to  be  pitied  whose  dominating 
inhabitants  are  so  unconscious  and  so 
ethically  embryonic  that  they  make  life 
a  commodity,  mercy  a  disease,  and  sys- 
tematic massacre  a  pastime  and  a  pro- 
fession. 

In  their  treatment  of  each  other 
human  beings  are  less  egoistic.  But 
"man's  inhumanity  to  man"  is  mourn- 
fully more  than  a  poetic  fiction. 

Look  at  the  intrigue  and  intimida- 
tion going  on  among  the  nations  of 
men  for  conquest  and  supremacy.  The 
seas  heave  with  navies  nosing  and 
blustering  about  the  continents,  seek- 
ing imperial  vantage,  or  bullying  "  de- 
pendencies" and  "possessions." 

Look  at  the  manner  in  which  human 


PREPONDERANCE   OF  EGOISM      133 

females  are  treated  by  males,  savage 
and  civilized,  all  over  the  globe. 
Women  are  everywhere  systematically 
deprived  of  privileges  which  men  have 
fought  and  bled  and  died  to  obtain 
for  themselves.  In  many  lands  a 
woman  legally  ceases  to  exist  the  day 
she  is  wed — if  she  ever  existed  before. 
Man  has  always  been,  and  is  to-day, 
the  race,  and  woman  his  shadow. 

Look  at  the  manner  in  which  the 
aborigines  are  swept  away  from  con- 
tinent after  continent  by  the  sword 
and  beverage  of  the  Aryans.  See  how 
the  red  children  of  America  have  been 
cheated  and  debauched  and  driven 
from  homes  where  they  and  their 
fathers  had  lived  from  immemorial 
generations.  When  the  banner  of 
Castile  first  furled  in  Bahama  breezes, 
America  was  inhabited  by  a  noble, 
magnanimous,  and  happy  people.  They 
were  not  like  the  sodden,  suspicious, 
revengeful  remnants  that  to-day  hud- 
dle on  barricaded  reserves,  the  vin- 


134      BETTER-WORLD  PHILOSOPHT 

dictive  survivors  of  four  centuries  of 
injustice.  They  were  kind  and  gener- 
ous. They  came  to  the  invading 
Europeans  as  children,  with  minds  of 
wonder  and  with  hands  filled  with 
presents.  They  were  treated  by  the 
invaders  like  refuse.  They  were 
plundered,  and  their  outstretched  hands 
cut  off  and  fed  to  Spanish  hounds. 
They  are  gone  from  the  valleys  where 
once  their  camp-smokes  curled  to 
heaven,  and  their  quaint  canoes  ruffle 
the  moonlight  of  the  rivers  no  more. 
They  that  remain  are  too  weak  to 
rise  in  warlike  challenge  to  the  aggres- 
sions of  the  mighty  white.  But  the 
story  of  the  meeting  of  the  pale  and 
the  red,  and  of  the  wrongs  of  the  van- 
quished red,  will  remain  as  one  of  the 
mournful  tales  of  this  world  when  the 
kindred  of  Lo,  "like  fleecy  clouds,  have 
melted  into  the  infinite  azure  of  the 
past." 

Look  at  human  industry !     See  the 
pounds    of   flesh    daily   torn    by    men 


PREPONDERANCE    OF  EGOISM       135 

everywhere  from  the  skeletons  of  each 
other  in  the  awful  riot  of  "business." 
Just  look  at  it!  The  inequity,  the  un- 
consciousness, the  hard-heartedness, 
the  ruffianism,  and  the  infernalism  of 
the  industrial  relations  and  conditions 
of  men  !  Watch  an  unfortunate 
approach  a  rich  man's  mansion  and 
ask  in  the  most  graceful  manner  for 
a  necessary  of  life.  Observe  the 
egoism  the  baron  shows  as  he  sends 
the  sufferer  away  unfed.  See  the  lord 
in  his  marble  palace,  upholstered  with 
all  the  comforts  of  civilization  and 
stuffed  with  the  dainties  of  the  zones, 
and  around  him  the  men  and  women 
who  made  his  wealth  feeding  on 
garbage,  suffocating  in  shanties,  and 
working  like  wretches  from  morning 
till  night.  See  the  multi-millionaire, 
scraping  the  palms  of  his  slaves  till  the 
blood  starts  for  the  last  farthing  their 
struggles  have  produced,  not  because 
he  is  hungry  and  would  buy,  but 
because  he  is  a  ruffian  and  can.  No 


136      BETTER-WORLD  PHILOSOPHY 

attention  whatever  is  paid  to  the  fact 
that  some  have  all  they  can  utilize  in 
the  satisfaction  of  their  desires  and 
multiples  more,  while  others  just  as 
good-looking  and  more  worthy  have 
nothing.  No  attention  is  paid  to  the 
fact  that  this  little  pill  of  a  world  is  to 
man  the  only  accessible  portion  of  the 
universe;  that  he  is  cut  off  from  other 
balls  by  leagues  of  impassable  space. 
One  human  being  may  have  the  autoc- 
racy of  townships  of  the  most  fertile 
and  strategic  portions  of  the  earth's 
crowded  surface,  while  others  are 
utterly  disinherited,  and  are  compelled, 
in  order  to  continue  in  the  universe,  to 
loan  themselves  as  lackeys  to  their 
luckier  or  less  scrupulous  masters. 
Countless  counties  of  the  earth's  sur- 
face are  compelled  to  idleness  for 
purposes  of  speculative  vantage,  or 
enclosed  and  policed  to  afford  lazy 
grandees  opportunity  to  amuse  their 
savage  instinct  for  slaughter;  while 
millions  of  civilized  souls,  thru  no  fault 


PREPONDERANCE   OF  EGOISM      137 

of  theirs,  are  forced  to  apologize  for 
their  existence,  and  to  go  thru  life 
deprived  even  of  a  place  on  which  they 
may  lie  down  and  die  without  incurring 
the  risk  of  being  ordered  off.  No 
quarter  is  shown.  Certain  forms  of 
acquisition  and  ownership  have  become 
established,  and  the  more  powerful, 
according  to  these  forms  or  in  spite  of 
them,  pillage  and  disinherit  the  weak 
with  an  inconsideration  that  is  simply 
sickening.  The  weak  submit  because 
they  are  helpless  and  because  they  are 
ignorant,  because  they  are  incarcerated 
and  disarmed,  and  because  they  have 
been  taught  and  intimidated  into  be- 
lieving that  the  conventional  and  the 
legal,  whatever  they  are,  have  been 
ordained  and  established  by  the  im- 
measurable manufacturer  of  things. 
A  more  pyramidal  farce  could  not  be 
framed  at  the  present  stage  of  the 
human  imagination  than  that  of  human 
industry — the  immense  privilege  and 
monopoly  and  the  immense  flatulence 


138      BETTER-WORLD  PHILOSOPHT 

of  wealth  side  by  side  with  the  most 
helpless  and  sickening  deprivation — 
all  brought  about  and  perpetuated  by 
hypocrites  who  lapse  into  hysterics 
over  the  injunction,  "  What  you  do  not 
like  when  done  to  yourself  do  not  do 
to  others." 

It  is  a  sad,  sad  spectacle — the  spec- 
tacle of  beings  coming  into  a  universe 
so  intrinsically  bleak  and  inhospitable, 
and  coming  into  it  with  such  unjust 
and  unbrotherly  natures. 


THE  SOCIAL  IDEAL 

What  is  the  ideal  relation  to  each 
other  of  the  inhabitants  of  the  uni- 
verse in  which  we  live?  It  is  that 
relation  which  will  aid  most  sincerely 
in  the  satisfaction  of  the  desires  exist- 
ing in  the  universe.  This  is  almost 
axiomatic.  There  may  be  differences 
of  opinion  as  to  what  that  relation  is 
which  is  best  adapted  to  the  satisfac- 
tion of  the  desires  of  the  universe. 
But  as  to  the  truth  that  that  arrange- 
ment of  the  social  units,  whatever  it 
is,  which  will  result  in  the  greatest 
welfare,  or  which,  in  other  words,  will 
be  most  useful,  is  the  ideal  relation, 
there  is  scarce  opportunity  for  ques- 
tion. The  end  or  ideal  which  every 
individual  being  strives  after  and  ap- 
proximates but  never  attains  is  the 
139 


140      BETTER-WORLD  PHILOSOPHY 

satisfaction  of  his  desires,  whatever 
those  desires  may  be.  And  the  ideal 
of  a  community  of  individuals  must  be 
the  composite  of  individual  ideals,  that 
is,  the  largest  totality  of  satisfaction 
possible  to  the  community  contem- 
plated. That  relation,  therefore,  of 
the  individuals  of  a  community  to  each 
other  which  will  most  earnestly  enable 
the  individuals  of  the  community,  as  a 
whole,  to  attain,  or  most  successfully 
to  approximate,  the  ideal  end,  must  be 
the  social  ideal  of  the  community;  and 
the  ideal  of  a  universeful  of  commu- 
nities must  be  for  a  like  reason  that 
articulation  of  the  individuals  and  ag- 
gregates to  each  other  which  will  most 
genuinely  serve  the  utilities  of  the 
cosmos. 

The  great  trouble  thus  far  with  as- 
sociated life  on  the  earth  has  been, 
perhaps,  not  the  failure  to  recognize 
that  association  should  serve  cosmic 
utilities,  but  the  conviction,  or  conceit, 
or  hallucination,  that  each  individual 


THE  SOCIAL   IDEAL  141 

or  clique  or  species  was  so  exceedingly 
precious,  and  the  satisfaction  of  its 
desires  was  so  eminently  indispensable, 
that  the  interests  of  the  rest  of  the  in- 
habitants of  the  universe  were  deemed 
trifling  in  comparison.  The  rest  of 
the  universe  were  supposed  to  attain 
their  loftiest  utilities  in  acting  as  acces- 
sories to  this  transcendent  individual 
or  set.  Such  a  philosophy  is,  of  course, 
an  exceedingly  comfortable  meditation 
for  those  who  possess  the  privilege  and 
the  power,  but  it  loses  its  consolation 
the  moment  a  stronger  individual  or 
set  comes  upon  the  scene. 

During  the  historic  evolution  of  the 
human  species,  social  ethics  has  made 
its  most  substantial  advances.  And 
the  fact  that  there  has  been  during 
this  period  a  gradual  and  rather  start- 
ling increase  in  the  number  of  beings 
in  the  universe  deemed  by  the  domi- 
nant ones  to  be  worthy  of  considera- 
tion is  a  significant  one,  and  indicates 
that  the  ideal  of  associated  life  con- 


142      BETTER-W  ORLD   PHILOSOPHT 

templated  by  the  cosmos  is  one  of 
wider  and  wider  and  more  nearly  uni- 
versal consideration.  The  earliest 
examples  of  human  association  were 
those  practically  of  autocentricism. 
Each  individual  considered  himself  the 
only  or  chief  end  for  which  the  uni- 
verse existed.  Each's  own  individual 
welfare  was  the  end  for  which  he 
struggled,  and  all  the  rest  of  the  uni- 
verse, sentient  and  insentient,  was  con- 
templated as  means  to  this  end.  From 
this  I-am-the-universe  state  of  things 
have  evolved,  thru  struggle,  the  vari- 
ous forms  of  aggregation — the  family, 
the  clan,  the  tribe,  and  the  nation. 
Ethnocentricism  is  that  stage  of  social 
evolution  in  which  a  nation  or  a  race, 
as  the  dominant  aggregate,  looks  upon 
itself  as  the  only  legitimate  or  profit- 
able end  for  which  the  universe  should 
exert  itself.  Ethical  relations  of  one 
degree  of  seriousness  or  another  are 
observed  by  the  members  of  this  na- 
tion or  race  to  each  other,  but  all  those 


THE  SOCIAL   IDEAL  143 

beings,  human  and  non-human,  beyond 
the  aggregate  are  treated  as  a  right- 
less  and  altogether  different  order  of 
existences.  Ethics,  in  our  part  of  the 
world,  may  be  considered  to  have  ad- 
vanced, at  least  in  its  pretensions,  to 
the  anthropocentric  stage  of  evolution. 
Aggregation  has  advanced  from  in- 
dividual to  tribe,  and  from  tribe 
to  race,  and  from  race  to  sex,  and 
from  sex  to  species,  until  to-day 
the  ethical  conception  of  many  minds 
includes,  with  greater  or  less  vivid- 
ness and  sincerity,  all  sexes,  col- 
ors, and  conditions  of  men.  The  fact 
that  an  animal  is  a  human,  that  is, 
that  he  belongs  to  the  hominine  species 
of  beings,  entitles  him,  regardless  of 
his  imperfections,  to  some  sort  of  con- 
sideration. Members  of  the  human 
species  can  not  suppress,  in  the  achieve- 
ment of  their  ends,  even  the  lives  of 
their  own  offspring  or  that  of  the  veri- 
tablest  barbarian  of  the  community, 
without  risk  of  retribution.  But  enor- 


144      BETTER-WORLD  PHILOSOPHT 

mities  of  any  proportion  and  with 
astounding  impunity  may  be  rained 
upon  those  of  differing  anatomy. 
Zoocentricism,  that  stage  of  solidarity 
in  which  the  entire  sentient  universe  is 
contemplated,  universal  consideration 
and  love,  is  as  yet  too  difficult  for  hu- 
man consciousness.  Human  philoso- 
phy, which  has  been  so  slow  in  discov- 
ering the  solidarity  of  the  human 
species,  is  to-day,  except  in  its  Ori- 
ental manifestations,  as  reluctant  to 
recognize  other  species  in  its  ethical 
contemplations  as  were  dominant  hu- 
man groups  in  less  advanced  stages  of 
aggregation  reluctant  to  recognize  the 
solidarity  of  the  hominine  species. 
But  to  the  prophet,  that  supermun- 
dane soul  who  has  heard  the  secrets 
and  intentions  of  the  universe,  the 
grand  confederation  of  all  the  graceful 
races  and  species  of  the  earth  into  one 
universal  scheme  of  consideration,  is 
as  inevitable  as  the  processes  of  evo- 
lution. The  deprecations  to-day  of 


THE  SOCIAL   IDEAL  145 

the  most  wanton  crimes  perpetrated 
by  the  human  on  associated  species, 
seen  in  societies  for  the  prevention  of 
cruelties  of  various  sorts,  are  but  the 
dawn-peeps  of  a  clearer  consciousness 
and  of  more  sweeping  and  consistent 
consideration.  The  ideal  relation  of 
the  inhabitants  of  the  universe  to  each 
other,  then,  is  that  relation  which  will 
most  actively  conduce  to  the  welfare 
of  the  universe;  and  the  welfare  of  the 
universe  means,  not  the  welfare  of  any 
one  individual  or  guild,  but  the  welfare 
of  all  the  beings  who  now  inhabit  it, 
and  of  those  who  shall  come  after — 
the  welfare  of  that  mighty  and  immor- 
tal personality  who  comprehends  all 
species  and  continues  from  generation 
to  generation — the  Sentient  Cosmos. 

What  is  the  relation  of  the  inhabi- 
tants of  the  universe  to  each  other 
which  will  be  most  conducive  to  the 
satisfaction  of  the  desires  of  the  uni- 
verse? I  believe  this  question  to  be 
capable  of  definite  and  conclusive  an- 


146      BETTER-WORLD  PHILOSOPHT 

swer.  The  desires  of  the  inhabitants 
of  the  universe  are  those  which  are 
satisfied  or  inhibited  by  living  beings 
themselves,  and  those  satisfied  or  inhib- 
ited by  the  inanimate  univere.  The 
ideal  universe  is  a  universe  so  ordered 
or  natured  as  to  allow  its  inhabitants 
to  understand  and  dominate  it  suffi- 
.cient  to  satisfy  their  desires,  and  inhab- 
ited by  beings  with  desires  so  poised 
and  assorted  that  there  is  not  only  not 
mutual  inhibition  of  desires,  but  such  a 
dovetailing  and  intertwining  of  the 
consciousnesses  that  there  is  mutual 
aid  in  the  satisfaction  of  desire — a  uni- 
verse responsive  to  the  whims  of  its 
inhabitants,  and  inhabited  by  beings 
socially  harmonious  and  helpful.  The 
relation  of  the  inhabitants  of  the  uni- 
verse to  each  other  most  favorable 
to  the  satisfaction  of  the  desires  of  the 
universe  is,  therefore,  that  which  will 
enable  the  animate  universe,  as  a 
whole,  to  attain  that  relation  which  an 
individual  living  being',  if  he  were 


THE  SOCIAL   IDEAL  147 

alone  in  the  universe,  would  desire  to 
achieve  for  himself — a  relation  such  as 
is  sustained  to  each  other  and  to  the 
whole  by  the  individual  cells  of  a  mul- 
ticellular  organism — -a  relation  in  which 
each  acts  in  the  interests  of  all,  includ- 
ing himself,  and  all  act  in  the  inter- 
ests of  each. 

There  are  two  beings  bearing  bur- 
dens. They  are  going  somewhere. 
The  way  is  hard.  There  is  great  dis- 
parity in  the  qualifications,  muscular 
and  mental,  of  the  two  individuals. 
One  is  powerful  in  intellect  and  limb. 
His  burden  is  inconsequential  to  him. 
His  formidable  frame  and  brilliant 
understanding  enable  him  to  accom- 
plish the  pilgrimage  with  ease  and  ex- 
ultation. The  other  individual  is  his 
opposite.  Nature  has  been  niggard 
with  him.  He  has  been  unfortunate, 
either  in  his  choice  of  heredity  or  in 
the  allotment  of  circumstances  among 
which  he  has  existed,  or  in  both.  He  is 
a  defective,  lank  in  limb  and  in  intellect. 


140      BETTER-WORLD  PHILOSOPHT 

His  feeble  levers,  unfortified  by  a  van- 
tage-devising mind,  creak  beneath  their 
unescapable  burden,  and  he  is  inces- 
santly victimized  by  the  conditions 
among  which  he  moves. 

Now,  the  more  adequate  of  these 
two  travelers  may  adopt  toward  his 
less  adequate  companion  one  of  three 
attitudes.  He  may  say  to  himself:  He 
is  weak  and  I  am  strong:  that  is  his 
misfortune.  He  is  helpless-minded  and 
I  am  not:  that  is  his  lookout.  We 
are  here  in  the  universe,  and  we  are 
evidently  here  for  what  there  is  in  it. 
I  will  transfer  my  burden,  or  a  part  of 
it,  to  him.  He  is  too  unsophisticated 
to  feel  it,  and  if  he  does  feel  it,  what 
is  he  going  to  do  about  it?  He  was  no 
doubt  brought  into  the  universe  for 
this  very  purpose,  anyhow.  He  ought 
to  be  satisfied,  since  he  has  been  so 
scarcely  created,  to  be  tolerated. 

This  attitude  is  the  attitude  of  the 
principle,  or  doctrine,  that  might  deter- 
mines that  which  is  right.  It  is  the 


THE  SOCIAL   IDEAL  149 

most  cruel  and  rudimentary  attitude  of 
associated  life.  It  is,  and  has  always 
been  in  this  world,  the  prevailing  atti- 
tude of  the  more  adequate  toward  the 
less  adequate.  It  is  the  attitude  of 
brute  force  and  of  struggle.  Human 
beings  in  their  earliest  associations  as- 
sumed assiduously  this  attitude,  and 
they  are  not  unfamiliar  with  every 
aspect  of  it  to-day. 

The  stronger  individual,  instead  of 
saying  that  might  is  right,  may  say: 
I  am  strong  and  my  comrade  is  weak. 
I  could  take  advantage  of  his  weakness 
if  I  wished,  but  I  do  not  wish  to  do  so. 
I  will  consider  him.  I  will  refrain  from 
imposition.  He  may  bear  his  burden 
and  I  will  bear  mine.  He  can  not  in- 
terfere with  me  and  I  will  not  interfere 
with  him.  A  fair  field  and  no  favor. 

This  is  what  is  called  equity,  or  jus- 
tice. It  is  the  attitude  of  fair  play. 
Each  being  has,  or  is  supposed  to  have, 
an  equal  chance  in  the  race  of  life. 
Each  accepts  whatever  allotment  is 


150       BETTER-WORLD   PHILOSOPHY 

made  to  him  on  entering  the  universe, 
and  makes  of  it  the  most.  There  is 
neither  fear  nor  favor,  neither  pity  nor 
plunder.  It  is  the  relation  of  equal 
opportunity.  It  is  the  stage  of  associa- 
tion exemplified  by  human  industry; 
that  is,  it  is  supposed  to  be,  but  it  is  not. 
What  is  meant  by  equality  of  opportu- 
nity is  equal  freedom  to  avoid  the  ills 
and  to  gain  the  goods  of  life,  equal 
access  or  equal  liberty  to  acquire  access 
to  the  means  for  the  satisfaction  of  de- 
sires. This  is  not  by  any  means  guar- 
anteed by  associated  human  beings. 
The  immense  inheritances  of  land  and 
machinery,  and  the  immense  favor  ob- 
tained by  the  intrigueful  thru  govern- 
ment, coupled  with  the  astonishing  fact 
that  a  majority  of  the  human  beings 
who  come  into  the  universe  come  into 
it  with  the  inalienable  birthright  to 
nothing,  make  a  farce  of  equal  oppor- 
tunity in  the  human  struggle  for  life. 
Every  individual  human  has  an  oppor- 
tunity at  his  birth  to  inherit  lands,  just 


THE   SOCIAL   IDEAL  151 

as  every  individual  has  an  opportunity 
to  be  born  healthy  or  ornamental;  but 
the  mournful  fact  is,  that  some  are  born 
so  and  others  are  not. 

The  third  attitude  which  may  be 
adopted  by  the  stronger  of  the  two 
travelers  toward  his  unfortunate  fellow 
is  that  of  helpfulness.  He  may  say:  I 
am  strong  and  he  is  weak.  I  could  ex- 
ploit him  if  I  would,  and  plunder  him 
of  the  meanings  of  life,  but  I  will  not 
do  so.  I  could  allow  him  to  bear  his 
burden  and  I  could  bear  mine,  but  I 
will  not  do  even  this.  These  altruistic 
instincts,  if  I  did  such  a  thing,  would 
cause  me  trouble.  I  will  help  him.  He 
is  my  brother  and  I  am  his  keeper.  I 
will  put  myself  in  his  place.  I  will  dp 
to  him  as  I,  if  circumstances  were  re- 
versed, would  desire  him  to  do  to  me. 
We  shall  be  in  triith  and  in  deed  brothers. 

This  is  more  than  the  equalizing  of 
opportunities.  It  is  the  balancing  of 
abilities.  It  is  the  recognition  of  the 
inequalities  which  a  capricious  and  un- 


152       BETTER-WORLD  PHILOSOPHT 

thinking  cosmos  has  established  in  the 
birth  of  beings.  It  is  the  attitude  of 
love,  and  it  is  as  superior  to  equity  as 
equity  is  superior  to  might.  It  is  the 
ultimate  and  only  noble  attitude  of  the 
strong  of  the  universe  toward  the  weak. 
It  is  the  social  ideal,  or  one  precious 
aspect  of  the  ideal,  because  it  is  that 
relation,  or  one  important  aspect  of 
that  relation,  which  will  afford  to  the 
universe  its  largest  welfare.  It  is  the 
doing  as  you  would  be  done  by.  It  is 
the  loving  of  others  as  you  love  your- 
self. It  is  the  equilibrium  of  relation, 
egoism  and  altruism  in  ideal  balance. 
It  is  the  putting  of  one's  self  in  the 
place  of  others,  and  this  has  been  a 
prevalent  impossibility  to  the  powerful. 
It  is  the  acting  by  one  being  upon 
others  as  he  would  that  others  would 
act  upon  him,  and  this  has  always  been 
a  reluctant  attainment  of  the  mighty. 
It  is  from  each  according  to  his  ability 
and  to  each  according  to  his  needs.  It 
is  simple  justice  of  being  to  being. 


THE   SOCIAL   IDEAL  153 

Justice  is  more  than  equity:  it  is 
benevolence.  It  is  not  enough  to  live 
and  let  live.  We  should  live  and  help 
live.  There  is  as  much  grace  and 
utility,  as  genuine  moral  glory,  in  the 
lifelong  succor  of  the  helpless  by  the 
strong  as  there  is  in  the  temporary 
chivalry  shown  by  a  human  being  in 
extricating  a  fellow  from  passing  mis- 
fortune. 

Accept  this  truth — the  truth  that  it  is 
as  beautiful  to  help  an  unfortunate  as 
to  refrain  from  his  exploitation — and 
you  are  in  possession  of  the  most 
essential  element  of  the  social  ideal. 
But  it  is  not  all  of  the  ideal.  The 
strong  should  supplement  the  weak, 
because  it  is  graceful,  because  the 
strong  would  desire  to  be  so  supple- 
mented if  they  were  weak.  But  it  is 
not  the  whole  of  supplementation. 
Individuals,  not  unequal  but  diverse, 
may  mutualize  their  efforts  to  the  ad- 
vantage of  all.  We  are  a  world  of  sup- 
plements, and  the  most  eminent  utilities 


154      BETTER-WORLD  PHILOSOPHY 

are  served  by  the  universal  pooling  of 
interests  and  destiny.  Each  individual 
should  perform  in  the  social  economy 
that  function  for  which  he  is  best 
fitted,  and  should  receive  in  return  a 
graceful  equity  in  the  means  for  the 
satisfaction  of  his  desires.  The  social 
ideal  comprehends  the  most  rational 
and  extensive  possible  differentiation 
and  integration  of  function  in  the 
grand  scheme  of  associated  life.  The 
ideal  relation  of  living  beings  to  each 
other  is,  therefore,  not  altogether  un- 
like that  existing  among  the  members 
of  the  most  civilized  societies  of  the 
human  species.  The  social  ideal  im- 
plies the  same  sort  of  division  or  dif- 
ferentiation of  function  as  that  in 
existing  societies,  only  more  conscious 
and  systemic.  Each  individual  per- 
forms in  the  social  ideal  a  function,  how- 
ever humble  or  eccentric,  and  each  per- 
forms as  nearly  as  possible  that  func- 
tion for  which  he  is  most  brilliantly 
fitted.  "  Nature  arms  each  man  with 


THE  SOCIAL   IDEAL  155 

some  faculty  which  enables  him  to  do 
easily  some  feat  impossible  to  any 
other,"  says  Emerson.  And  this  is 
true — more  or  less.  The  functions  of 
the  social  organism  in  the  ideal  state 
are  all  accurately  synthesized  into  one 
harmonious  whole.  Ideal  cooperation 
is  rational  and  intentional  rather  than 
accidental.  The  clumsy,  unsystematic 
production  of  existing  societies  is  re- 
placed by  perfectly  symmetrical  and 
unified  procedures.  The  whole  of 
society  constitutes  one  mighty  organ- 
ism carrying  on  the  functions  necessary 
to  its  maintenance  and  welfare  in  the 
most  intelligent  and  magnanimous 
manner.  The  social  ideal  is  an  organ- 
ized fraternity  of  perfectly  articulating 
supplements,  assaulting  the  inanimate 
as  an  individual  personality,  not  as  a 
mob  of  incompatible  ruffians. 

The  most  deplorable  defect  in  exist- 
ing societies  of  men  consists,  not  in  a 
lack  of  differentiation  of  function,  for 
the  diversity  of  talents  among  living 


156      BETTER-WORLD   PHILOSOPHY 

beings  and  the  diversity  of  the  resources 
of  the  earth  have  prompted  a  com- 
paratively high  degree  of  functional 
evolution  among  human  and  associated 
species,  but  in  unjust  and  unsystematic 
assimilation.  Human  beings,  even  with 
their  maudlin  methods,  can  produce 
enough  for  the  reasonable  satisfaction 
of  all  organic  desires.  The  gigantic 
defect  is  in  the  distribution  of  the 
results  of  effort.  The  preponderance 
of  egoism  in  human  nature  has  im- 
pelled men  to  take  advantage  of  the 
helplessness  of  each  other  caused  by 
the  differentiation  of  function.  Mai- 
assimilation  and  social  cliscord  result. 
This  book  dwells  little  on  the  matter 
of  the  management  of  the  inanimate, 
because  that  part  of  the  problem  of 
life  were  already  magnificently  ad- 
vanced toward  solution.  Man  com- 
mands the  tendencies  about  him  as 
captains  command  cockades.  The 
frightful  dereliction  is  in  the  distribu- 
tion of  the  results  of  management. 


THE  SOCIAL   IDEAL  157 

Some  are  surfeited  and  others  are 
starved.  The  weak  are  enslaved,  and 
the  strong  and  intrigueful  have  become 
usurping  parasites;  "over-production" 
orgies  at  the  very  lips  of  starvation; 
the  means  of  production  idle  in  the 
grip  of  the  monopolizers;  and  gaunt- 
eyed  armies,  footsore  and  desperate, 
go  up  and  down  the  lands  seeking  in 
vain  opportunity  to  produce  the  means 
for  the  maintenance  of  their  existence. 
In  ideal  association  there  is  no 
struggle.  Each  performs  his  function, 
and  each  is  entitled  in  turn  to  assimil- 
ate the  essentials  for  his  satisfaction. 
The  amount  of  assimilation  does  not 
depend  on  genius  for  intrigue  nor  on 
ability  to  be  born  royal,  but  on  needs. 
Why  should  living  beings  struggle 
against  each  other,  except  as  they 
struggle  to  advance  the  general  wel- 
fare? Happiness  is  just  as  valuable 
and  just  as  beautiful  a  thing  in  one 
being  as  in  another.  Some  have 
greater  talent  for  it  than  have  others, 


158      BETTER-WORLD   PHILOSOPHY 

but  it  is  a  state  of  sweetness  and  ela- 
tion always  and  everywhere.  And 
each  living  being,  in  deliberating  on 
the  problem  of  the  proprieties,  should 
realize  the  fact  that,  as  a  matter  of  fact, 
it  is  a  matter  of  indifference  whether 
this  elation  belongs  to  his  sensorium  or 
to  some  other  sensorium.  It  is  insane 
for  each  being  to  insist  that  he,  as  an 
organism,  is  the  one  organism  to  whom 
pleasure  is  indispensable.  The  only 
indispensable  is  that  pleasure  be  max- 
imized. If  a  definite  amount  of  happi- 
ness is  to  be  experienced,  it  is,  in  the 
eyes  of  the  absolute,  a  matter  of 
indifference  whether  this  happiness  is 
experienced  by  one  individual  or  by 
another,  by  self  or  by  some  other  con- 
scious portion  of  the  universe. 

This  universe  is  not  an  ideal  uni- 
verse. It  is  impossible,  without  more 
fundamental  revision  of  its  character 
than  human  beings  can  ever  hope  to 
effect,  to  make  of  it  an  ideal  place,  or 
anything  like  an  ideal  place,  for  the 


THE  SOCIAL   IDEAL  159 

satisfaction  of  desires.  The  cosmic 
processes  which  have  evolved  con- 
scious beings  on  the  earth — and  these 
processes  are  but  the  hard-headed 
tendencies  of  matter — have  so  hope- 
lessly nuptialed  pleasure  and  pain  that 
it  is  impossible  to  believe  that  fumbling 
philosophy  will  ever  be  able  to  divorce 
them.  But  we  are  here,  useless  and 
mysterious  as  it  may  seem,  a  set  of 
incompatible  vagrants,  orphaned  here 
on  a  dervish-like  lump  of  something, 
in  the  midst  of  immensities  so  hard 
and  arrogant  that  no  wail  from  our 
worm-like  larynxes  can  aught  avail. 
And,  so  far  as  we  can  make  out,  it  is 
the  program  of  things  that  we  are  to 
remain  here.  We  can  not  lie  down 
peacefully  and  perish,  for  we  are  pos- 
sessed by  an  instinct  lashing  us  to  live. 
We  are  forbidden  from  other  worlds 
by  leagues  of  unatmosphered  space. 
The  earth  is  our  mother,  our  habita- 
tion, and  our  tomb.  In  the  presence  of 
these  facts,  it  would  seem  the  highest 


160      BETTER-WORLD  PHILOSOPHT 

sanity  for  us  to  be  kind  and  merciful 
to  each  other,  and  to  cultivate  without 
hypocrisy  the  charming  chivalry  of  the 
Golden  Rule.  The  task  of  under- 
standing and  managing  the  tendencies 
which  surround  and  beat  upon  us  and 
in  the  midst  of  which  we  writhe  and 
supplicate  is  certainly  sufficient  in  itself 
without  our  turning  upon  and  cudgel- 
ing each  other. 

The  social  ideal  here  sketched  is  not 
a  state  into  which  the  conscious  uni- 
verse or  any  considerable  part  of 
it  will,  or  could,  immediately  pass. 
Human  nature,  just  as  it  is,  is  undoubt- 
edly capable  in  its  higher  and  more 
evolved  manifestations  of  a  much 
intenser  gregariousness  and  mutual- 
ization  than  is  actualized  by  existing 
societies.  Existing  institutions  have 
been  framed  by  egoistic  individuals  for 
individualistic  ends.  And  altho  human 
institutions  are  unframed  for  it,  the 
nature  of  the  highest  human  beings 
is  probably  capable,  without  further 


THE   SOCIAL   IDEAL  161 

modification,  of  the  actual  equalization 
of  opportunities  in  the  struggle  for 
satisfactions.  But  the  social  ideal, 
the  state  in  which  there  is  not  only 
the  equalizing  of  opportunities  but  the 
balancing  of  abilities,  will  never  be 
generally  attained  without  further  evo- 
lution and  revision  of  human  nature. 
This  evolution  will  without  any  doubt 
take  place  in  future  much  more  rapidly 
than  it  could  have  taken  place  in  the 
past,  and  we  maybe  nearer  the  realiza- 
tion of  the  ideal  than  our  dull  intellects 
suspect.  One  thing  is  certain,  how- 
ever, and  that  is,  that  the  most  power- 
ful instinct  of  human  nature,  the 
instinct  .to  struggle  and  survive,  the 
instinct  to  be  superior,  must  be  de- 
stroyed or  greatly  subordinated  before 
the  state  here  outlined  can  be  realized; 
for  the  ideal  state  will  be  practically 
bereft  of  opportunity  for  its  satisfac- 
tion. 

It  is  not  possible,  and  it  never  will  be 
possible,    to    organize    all   the    beings 


1 62       BETTER-WORLD  PHILOSOPHT 

occupying  space  into  one  immense 
confederacy.  This  would  be  ideal,  but 
from  the  inexorable  nature  of  things 
it  can  never  be.  The  denizens  of  the 
sea  depths  can  not  correlate  with  the 
inhabitants  of  the  clouds.  The  lion 
can  not  fraternize  with  the  lamb,  nor 
the  hawk  with  the  sparrow.  The 
natures  of  beings  have  been  evolved 
thru  war,  and  they  are  in  large  part 
irredeemably  antagonistic.  But  the 
approximation,  if  honest,  may  be  more 
successful  than  is  supposed,  and  may 
include  many  species  not  human.  The 
bird  may  contribute  his  song  and 
plumage,  the  sheep  his  fleece,  the 
horse,  the  ox,  the  elephant,,  and  the 
camel  their  strength  or  speed,  the  cow 
and  the  fowl  their  secretions,  the  dog 
his  fidelity,  and  man  his  art.  The 
ultimate  and  ideal  aggregation  of  the 
living  universe  will  not  be  a  pan- 
American  union  nor  a  Euro-American 
league,  nor  even  an  aggregation  whose 
spirit  is  embodied  in  a  parliament  of 


THE   SOCIAL    IDEAL  163 

man,  but  the  widest  and  most  consum- 
mate possible  Confederation  of  the 
Consciousnesses. 

The  social  ideal  enunciated  in  this 
essay  is  the  ideal  which  has  been  held 
up  from  time  to  time  by  the  sages  of 
the  human  species,  and  the  ideal 
toward  which  the  ages  have  ever 
heaved.  The  profoundest  moralists 
who  have  poured  out  their  precepts 
upon  this  erring  world  have,  indepen- 
dently of  each  other,  by  simply  observ- 
ing and  contemplating  the  actions  of 
men,  promulgated  the  same  golden 
formula  for  the  regulation  of  the  con- 
duct of  associated  beings.  "What  you 
do  not  like  when  done  to  yourself,  do 
not  do  to  others,"  said  the  Mongolian 
sage  with  wonderful  inspiration  twenty- 
four  centuries  ago.  Five  centuries 
later  the  great  law-giver  of  the  Chris- 
tian faith  reiterated  the  same  senti- 
ment when  he  said  to  the  mountain 
multitude,  "  Do  unto  others  as  you 
would  that  others  would  do  unto  you." 


164       BETTER-WORLD  PHILOSOPHY 

Buddha  said  the  same  thing,  and  Lao 
Tse  and  Seneca  and  Kant.  It  is 
the  injunction  which  has  been  pro- 
claimed by  the  sublimest  souls  that 
have  pondered  and  agonized  over  the 
sins  of  beings.  And  what  is  it  to  act 
upon  others  as  you  would  that  others 
would  act  upon  you?  It  is  to  put  your- 
self in  the  place  of  others.  It  is  con- 
sideration of  others  as  ardent  as 
consideration  of  self.  It  is  the  bal- 
ancing of  abilities,  supplementation,  the 
social  ideal. 

The  social  ideal  here  enunciated  is 
the  ideal,  also,  of  the  evolutional  pro- 
cesses by  and  in  accordance  with  whose 
intentions  all  things  are  determined. 
Human  society  is  but  the  van  of  the 
life  evolutions  on  the  earth.  Human 
history  is  the  remembered  chapter,  the 
current  events,  of  biology.  And  bio- 
logical evolution  is  a  part,  an  insig- 
nificant but  constituent  part,  of  the 
stupendous  performances  of  the  infinite. 
Social  phenomena  are  phases  of  uni- 


THE   SOCIAL   IDEAL  165 

versal  phenomena;  and  it  is  only  by 
contemplating  them  in  their  biological 
and  cosmical  perspective  that  they  can 
be  understood.  Emancipating  one's 
self  from  all  participation  in  affairs,  and 
contemplating  the  evolutional  proceed- 
ings as  purely  objective,  we  are  less 
concerned  about  the  reformation  of 
the  universe  than  about  the  ascertain- 
ment of  the  intentions  of  the  universe. 
We  confide  in  its  instincts.  We  look 
upon  it  as  grinding  to  powder  all  who 
are  not  in  sympathy  with  it.  It  has  a 
program.  The  social  ideal  is  a  goal. 
All  evolution  is  aspiration  after  hetero- 
geneity and  agglutination.  Human 
aggregation  —  the  emancipation  of 
masses  and  races  in  historic  time 
and  the  nationalization  and  munici- 
palization  of  industries  in  present 
time — is  but  the  continuation  of  a  pro- 
cess as  old  and  as  universal  as  the 
atoms. 

The  earliest  forms  of  society  on  the 
earth  were  societies  of  protozoa,  socie- 


1 66      BETTER-WORLD  PHILOSOPHT 

ties  of  unicellular  forms  which  were 
evolved  in  the  struggle  for  existence 
as  the  types  of  life  best  fitted  to  survive. 
These  creatures  formed  themselves 
into  societies  because  they  found  it 
better  to  cooperate  than  to  contend, 
and  because  they  could,  by  the  mutual- 
ization  of  interests  and  effort,  encoun- 
ter more  successfully  the  exigencies  of 
their  environment.  It  was  in  the  line 
of  least  arrest.  They  grew  closer  and 
closer  together,  and  more  and  more 
differentiated  and  integrated— notwith- 
standing the  protests  of  the  individual- 
ists among  them,  no  doubt,  who  foresaw 
in  the  trend  of  things  a  fearful  slavery. 
By  the  continued  organization  of  func- 
tion, these  societies  finally  became 
organisms,  with  fins  and  with  the  dispo- 
sition to  move  about.  They  climbed 
out  upon  the  continents,  differentiated 
legs,  ascended  to  the  forest  tops,  ac- 
quired wings,  and  sailed  off  into  the 
azure.  We  call  them  metazoa.  Every 
metazoan,  therefore,  in  organization  if 


THE  SOCIAL   IDEAL  167 

not  in  sentiment,  is  a  socialist,  and    a 
socialist  of  the  "  rankest"  sort. 

The  aggregation  going  on  among 
metazoa,  including  the  aggregation  of 
human  metazoa,  is  of  the  same  charac- 
ter as  that  which  took  place  long,  long 
ago  in  the  protozoan  societies  of  pri- 
meval seas.  It  is  the  same  kind  of 
differentiation  and  integration,  and  it  is 
taking  place  for  the  same  reason  and 
with  identical  inevitableness.  It  will 
continue,  because  it  is  in  the  line  of 
least  arrest.  The  less  specialized  ag- 
gregates will  give  way  to  the  more 
specialized,  as  the  less  specialized  types 
of  life  have  always  given  place  to  the 
more  specialized,  because  in  the  strug- 
gle with  each  other  and  with  the  inani- 
mate the  most  highly  specialized  forms 
are  the  best  fitted  to  survive.  Metazoa 
will  evolve  into  compound  metazoa,  as 
protozoa  have  evolved  into  compound 
protozoa.  It  may  seem  very  strange 
to  us,  because  we  are  so  accustomed  to 
social  incoherence,  and  are  so  uncon- 


l68       BETTER-WORLD  PHILOSOPHY 

scious  of  social  possibility;  but  there  is- 
nothing  in  this  universe  more  certain 
than  that  metazoan  aggregation  will 
go  on  until  there  is  evolved  on  this 
earth  a  literal  social  organism  (or 
organisms)  of  metazoa,  in  which  there 
is  differentiated  a  class  for  every  dis- 
tinct function  and  sub-function  per- 
formed by  the  organism — a  class  for 
the  prehension  of  nutrition,  a  class  for 
the  circulation  of  commodities,  an  in- 
ventive class,  a  governing  class,  a  re- 
productive class,  and  so  on.  It  is 
inevitable,  because  it  is  best,  and  be- 
cause it  is  in  accordance  with  the 
primal  tendency  of  the  universe — that 
province  of  it,  at  least,  in  which  the 
earth  is  located.  The  differentiation 
of  seas  and  continents  out  of  incandes- 
cent fire-mud,  and  the  curdling  of  pri- 
meval haze  into  globes  and  systems, 
were  not  more  inevitable.  The  ten- 
dency of  human  and  other  beings  to 
mutualize  is  a  phase  of  the  universal 
tendency  toward  aggregation. 


THE    DERIVATION    OF    THE    NA- 
TURES  OF    LIVING    BEINGS. 

The  final  question,  and  the  most 
important  and  difficult  to  be  answered 
in  formulating  a  better-world  philos- 
ophy, is  how  to  achieve  the  relation 
which  has  just  been  described;  how  to 
bridge  the  hiatus  between  the  actually 
existing,  over-egoistic  condition  of 
things  and  the  ideal;  how  to  develop 
ourselves  into  beings  with  natures  that 
will  spontaneously  act  each  for  all  and 
all  for  each.  This  is  a  question  of 
unusual  importance,  for  an  ideal  is 
of  the  utmost  conceivable  uselessness 
unless  it  can  somehow  be  achieved  or 
approximated. 

I    will    preface    the    answer   to    this 

question  with  a  discussion  of  another 

question:  What    is    the    derivation    of 

the  natures  of  living  beings?     Why  is 

169 


170      BETTER-WORLD  PHILOSOPHY 

there  such  endless  variety  in  the 
natures  of  beings?  Why  are  they  not 
all  natured  alike?  And  why  are  all 
natured  just  as  they  are  natured  ?  Why 
is  the  fox  sly,  and  the  antelope  timid, 
and  the  Ethiopian  emotional?  Why 
is  not  the  fox  intrepid,  and  the  antelope 
fierce,  and  the  Ethiopian  passionless? 
Why  are  they  not  all  pensive?  Why 
is  the  ant  prudential,  and  the  human 
female  vain?  Why  are  some  human 
beings  selfish  and  others  philanthropic, 
some  sage-like  and  others  witless?  It 
will  be  easier  to  indicate  how  to  develop 
our  natures  into  natures  of  a  specified 
style,  if  we  are  previously  informed  in 
what  manner  we  derived  the  natures 
we  now  have. 

By  the  nature  of  any  being  or  species 
is  meant  the  character  of  its  conscious 
tendencies  to  move.  In  the  conscious- 
ness of  every  creature  are  impulses,  or 
tendencies  to  change  place.  These 
impulses,  or  tendencies  to  move,  are 
not  capricious,  liable,  each  one,  to  be 


THE  NATURES  OF  LIVING  BEIATGS     17 1 

unlike  all  those  that  have  preceded. 
They  are  capable  of  more  or  less  classi- 
fication. These  classes  of  impulses 
are  called  instincts.  And  the  nature  of 
any  being  or  species  depends  on  the 
quality  or  style  of  the  instincts,  or 
classes  of  conscious  tendencies  to  move, 
which  it  possesses.  The  nature  of  the 
horse  is  gentle,  that  of  the  hyena  is 
violent,  man's  is  bigoted,  and  the  bit- 
tern's melancholy,  because  the  im- 
pulses existing  in  the  consciousnesses 
of  these  animals  are  such  as  cause 
conduct  that  is  respectively  gentle, 
violent,  egotistic,  and  gloomy. 

Since  impulses  are  simply  sensations 
which  have  become  motor,  and  since 
sensations  are  only  tendencies  from 
without  become  conscious,  the  nature 
of  any  being  may  be  said  to  be  the 
manner  in  which  it  correlates  the  ten- 
dencies which  it  contacts,  or  the  manner 
in  which  a  being,  as  a  distinct  and  de- 
tached portion  of  the  universe,  reacts 
upon  the  rest  of  the  universe. 


172      BETTER-WORLD  PHILOSOPHT 

The  similarity  and  dissimilarity  in 
the  natures  of  individuals,  tribes,  and 
species  are  due  to  the  similarity  and 
dissimilarity  in  their  instincts.  An  ox 
is  of  a  very  different  nature  from  a 
fox,  and  men  (some  of  them)  are  very 
unlike  serpents,  because  the  classes 
of  impulses  in  the  consciousnesses  of 
these  animals  are  for  the  most  part 
very  different  in  one  animal  from 
another.  Serpents,  oxen,  foxes,  and 
men,  however,  are  all  similar  in  their 
eagerness  to  reproduce  themselves,  and 
in  their  emphatic  reluctance  to  die. 

By  individuality  of  nature  are  meant 
instincts,  or  inflections  of  character, 
peculiar  to  an  individual.  Fido  is  a 
canine  of  considerable  individuality, 
because  the  styles  of  Fido's  impulses 
are  to  a  notorious  extent  sui  generis. 
Melancthon  is  a  man  of  no  individuality 
whatever,  because  his  instincts  are  of 
that  commonplace  character  prevailing 
among  the  members  of  his  species. 
The  lower  orders  of  beings  are,  as  a 


THE  NA  T URES  OF  LI  VING  BEINGS     1 7 3 

rule,  distinguished  for  the  poverty  of 
their  natures,  that  is,  for  the  fewness 
of  their  instincts,  and  for  lack  of  in- 
dividuality, that  is,  for  the  sameness 
of  the  impulses  among  the  members 
of  an  order;  while  the  higher  orders  of 
animals  are  characterized  by  wealth  of 
nature  and  individual  initiative. 

The  natures  of  living  beings  are  the 
result  of  the  cooperation  or  concussion 
of  two  elements:  the  fortuities  of  hered- 
ity and  environment.  By  fortuities  of 
heredity  are  meant  those  mysterious 
pre-natal  conditions,  or  caprices,  which 
cause  variety  in  offspring.  The  chil- 
dren of  the  same  parents  are  not  iden- 
tical. They  differ,  not  only  in  the 
inflections  of  their  character  and  in 
degree  of  acumen,  but  in  color,  form, 
muscularity,  and  the  like.  These  indi- 
vidual variations,  caused  by  the  com- 
pound character  of  parents,  and  called 
here  fortuities  of  heredity,  are  the 
geneses  of  the  natures  (and  structures) 
of  living  beings. 


174       BETTER-WORLD  PHILOSOPHT 

By  environment  are  meant  those  sur- 
roundings which  have  accompanied  the 
ancestral,  or  phylogenetic,  career  of  in- 
dividuals and  species.  Environment  is 
the  rest  of  the  universe,  or  as  much  of 
the  rest  of  the  universe  as  affects  that 
which  is  environed.  Environment  is 
flavored  with  hardship.  It  is  a  vast 
colander  thru  which  the  generations 
perpetually  strain.  Those  inflections 
of  character  (and  structure)  which  in 
the  mutations  of  heredity  arise,  and 
which  assist  the  life  of  the  individual 
or  species,  are  passed  on,  and  those 
that  are  useless  or  deleterious  are 
estopped.  The  nature  of  any  being  or 
species,  therefore,  is,  in  its  fundamental 
features,  the  result  of  its  environment 
up  to  date.  For  every  instinct,  aside 
from  the  anomalous  and  transient  acci- 
dents of  heredity,  exists  because  there 
has  been  somewhere  in  the  ancestral 
life  of  the  individual  or  aggregate  pos- 
sessing it  an  environment  which  ac- 
centuated and  selected  that  particular 


THE  NATURES  OF  LIVING  BEINGS     175 

instinct.  Ever  since  the  life  process 
began,  it  has  encountered  hardship  and 
discrimination.  Millions  of  species  have 
perished,  and  those  that  have  survived 
have  been  incessantly  those  whose 
modes  of  motion  were  compatible  with 
and  tolerated  by  their  environment. 
A  number  of  antelopes  are  born,  some 
of  them  sluggish  and  some  alert,  and 
their  environment  contains  beings  of 
considerable  sagacity  who  eat  ante- 
lopes. Those  antelopes  who  survive, 
other  things  equal,  will  be  those  of 
vigilant  and  susceptible  natures.  If 
some  serpents  are  fierce  and  others 
submissive,  and  these  serpents  are  sur- 
rounded by  beings  who  destroy  all  from 
whom  they  are  not  by  fear  deterred, 
then  the  surviving  serpents  will  be  war- 
like. Foxes  are  sly,  because  their  en- 
vironment is,  or  was  at  one  time, 
discouraging  to  boldness.  Bears  hiber- 
nate, because  those  bears  with  the 
hibernating  ability  were  the  only  ones 
able  to  encounter  successfully  the  cli- 


176       BETTER-WORLD  PHILOSOPHT 

matic  exigencies  of  their  environment. 
The  disparity  between  the  sexual  in- 
stincts of  the  male  and  female  of  most 
animals,  and  which  is  probably  the 
cause  of  so  much  unhappiness  among 
civilized  beings,  is  to  be  accounted  for 
by  the  conditions  which  prevailed  in 
the  savage  and  sub-human  stages  of 
evolution — conditions  which  developed 
in  one  sex  an  appetite  out  of  all  pro- 
portion to  the  necessities  of  civilized 
life,  and  in  the  other  sex  a  flavorless 
and  tantalizing  disinterestedness.  The 
dread  of  death,  an  instinct  so  unfailing 
in  all  animals,  exists,  not  because  ex- 
istence is  intrinsically  so  sweet,  nor  be- 
cause annihilation  is  so  distressing,  but 
because  this  bugaboo  has  been  an  indis- 
pensable safeguard  against  the  suicide 
of  the  life  process.  The  expectation 
of  post-mortem  consciousness,  so  preva- 
lent and  so  insistent  among  human  be- 
ings, is  a  hope  arising  from  the  con- 
cussion of  a  desire  and  a  fancy — the 
desire  to  persist  just  referred  to,  and 


THE  NATURES  OF  LIVING  BEINGS     177 

the  fancy  or  hallucination  of  a  double 
which  originated  among  savages  from 
shadows,  images,  dreams,  and  the  like. 
The  instinct  for  inactivity  among  hu- 
man beings,  the  instinct  which  makes 
labor  a  burden  and  impels  the  most  of 
us  to  shuffle  upon  others,  if  possible, 
our  part  of  it,  is  an  instinct  which  ex- 
ists because  there  is  such  an  enormous 
disparity  in  the  labor  requirements  be- 
tween the  civilized  life  we  now  live  and 
the  indolent,  lackadaisical  life  of  the 
savage  from  which  we  have  compara- 
tively just  emerged.  In  the  course  of 
ages,  after  selection  has  done  its  work, 
if  labor  continues  to  be  a  necessity, 
labor  will  become  a  pleasure  and  a  de- 
light. And  if  the  human  world,  after 
the  work-instinct  becomes  established, 
should  suddenly  lapse  again  into  a  stage 
where  exertion  were  superfluous,  indo- 
lence and  leisure  would  be  as  disagree- 
able and  as  energetically  shunned  as  is 
labor  now.  For  it  must  be  remembered 
that  instincts  are  not  only  developed 


178      BETTER-WORLD  PHILOSOPHT 

by  environment,  but  they  are  also  elim- 
inated. If  a  trait  of  character,  devel- 
oped by  a  certain  environment,  suddenly 
encounters  an  entirely  different  envi- 
ronment— an  environment  which  disre- 
gards it  and  encourages  a  dissimilar 
and  antagonistic  trait — the  neglected 
trait,  in  the  course  of  ages,  will  disap- 
pear. Instincts  rise  and  fall,  develop 
and  disappear,  with  the  varying  muta- 
tions of  environment,  slowly  evolving 
under  the  protectorate  of  a  friendly 
environment,  and  reluctantly  perishing 
under  the  influence  of  a  hostile  one. 

The  reluctance  of  an  instinct  to 
perish  which  has  once  become  estab- 
lished explains  the  frequent  super- 
fluous instincts  to  be  found  in  many 
animals — instincts  which  are  obeyed, 
not  because  they  are  useful,  but  simply 
because  they  exist — instincts  which 
were  at  one  time  essential  to  the  life 
of  the  species,  but  which  on  account  of 
changes  in  environment  are  now  use- 
less and  absurd.  The  annual  migra- 


THE  NATURES  OF  LIVING  BEINGS     179 

tion  westward  of  the  Norway  leming, 
resulting  in  the  destruction  of  vast 
numbers  of  the  species  in  the  sea, 
must  have  been  at  one  time  a  beneficial 
performance,  but  is  now,  owing  to 
changed  conditions,  highly  decimative. 
Domestic  animals,  who  were  originally 
undominated  by  human  beings  and 
whose  environments  have  been  revo- 
lutionized by  man,  possess  abun- 
dantly these  anachronisms.  Horses 
scamper  preceding  an  impending  blast, 
as  was  their  wont  on  the  unprotected 
prairies;  birds  beat  their  prisons  at 
migrating  time;  and  pampered  cats 
and  canines  prowl  the  woods  and 
prairies  as  intently  as  during  their 
wild,  ante-slavery  careers.  About  the 
first  thing  a  human  infant  does  is  to 
demonstrate  its  anthropoid,  or  arbo- 
real, ancestry  by  grasping  and  spite- 
fully clinging  to  everything  that 
stimulates  its  palms.  The  ghost  and 
goblin  instinct  of  children — the  instinct 
which  causes  the  imagination  of  civil- 


l8o      BETTER-WORLD  PHILOSOPHY 

ized  young  to  people  the  darkness 
with  unfriendly  forms — is  a  stubborn 
survival  of  savage  superstition,  which 
often  requires  half  a  lifetime  to  extir- 
pate. Perhaps  the  most  unfortunate 
survival  of  this  character  among 
human  beings  is  the  instinct  among 
industrial  peoples  for  struggle  and 
survival.  In  the  mutations  that  have 
resulted  in  the  evolution  of  civilized 
human  beings  on  the  earth,  as  has 
already  been  shown,  struggle  has  per- 
formed a  continual  and  predominating 
function.  Among  the  non-human 
races,  by  far  the  greatest  amount  of 
energy  expended  is  expended  in  the 
attempt  of  one  animal  to  overcome 
another  and  in  the  counter  effort  to 
escape.  Even  among  savages  war  is 
the  principal  business.  Those  peoples, 
therefore,  who  have  emerged  out  of 
the  predatory  stage  into  the  peaceful 
and  industrial,  still  retain  this  passion 
for  struggle  and  triumph  developed 
during  the  long  ages  of  biological 


THE  NATURES  OF  LIVING  BEINGS     181 

militancy.  The  whole  fabric  of  in- 
dustry is  a  system  of  competitive 
struggle  which  ought  in  all  conscience 
to  be  displaced  by  the  more  economical 
and  graceful  system  of  cooperation. 
But  it  is  perpetuated  because  the 
instinct  for  achieving  the  apex  of 
the  heap  is  too  prominent  to  remain 
unentertained.  Among  children  and 
youths,  and  to  a  disgraceful  extent 
among  adults,  this  instinct  is  exercised 
in  sports,  games,  regattas,  and  other 
contests  of  speed,  strength,  or  sagacity. 
The  fact  that  nearly  all  human  amuse- 
ments, from  school-yard  divertisements 
to  tournaments  which  attract  nations, 
are  devices  which  contain  no  utility 
nor  interest  whatever  except  in  offer- 
ing opportunity  to  tickle  this  instinct, 
is  a  fact  full  of  sadness  and  significance. 
A  boy  with  such  an  aversion  for  the 
useful  expenditure  of  energy  that  he 
will  avoid  work  at  all  hazards  will 
plunge  into  some  senseless  competition, 
and  surge  and  struggle  for  hours  as  if 


1 82      BETTER-WORLD  PtflLOSOPHT 

his  life  were  at  stake,  simply  to  put  to 
rout  imaginary  foes.  The  polite  name 
for  this  subjugating  instinct  is  Ambi- 
tion; but  whether  it  manifests  itself 
in  national  conquests,  literary  set-tos, 
fistic  bouts,  or  school-room  rivalries, 
it  is  essentially  the  same  old  holo- 
thurian. 

Not  only  the  psychical  character  of 
beings,  but  that  which,  if  it  does  not 
cause,  accompanies  the  psychical,  that 
is,  the  physical,  is  also  the  result  of 
the  same  or  of  similar  environmental 
selection.  Every  established  inflection 
of  form,  function,  and  structure  of 
animals  exists  because  it  has  at  one 
time  or  another  been  selected  by  en- 
vironment. Equine  fleetness  and  feline 
agility,  piscatorial  scaliness  and  human 
hairlessness  and  perpendicularity,  the 
beauty  and  beardlessness  of  woman 
and  the  puissance  of  man — all  the 
myriad  qualities  of  physique  what- 
soever possessed  by  living  beings  have 
been  assigned  to  them  by  the  environ- 


THE  NATURES  OF  LIVING  BEINGS     183 

mental  moulds  to  which  the  life  process 
has  been  compelled  continually  to  con- 
form. Life  originated  in  the  sea, 
afterward  crept  out  upon  the  land, 
entered  the  forests,  climbed  and 
clambered  among  the  trees,  became 
endowed  with  perpendicularity  and 
hands,  descended  and  walked  upon 
the  soil,  invented  agriculture,  built 
cities  and  states,  and  is  to-day  engaged 
in  threatening  to  become  civilized.  If 
there  had  been  no  forests  upon  the 
earth,  therefore,  man  in  all  proba- 
bility would  have  been  a  quadruped, 
and  it  is  impossible  to  conceive  in  this 
contingency  how  different,  and  espe- 
cially how  much  less  conscious,  the 
face  of  the  earth  might  have  been. 
Why  is  the  brain  of  vertebrates,  which 
is  an  enlarged  and  elaborated  section 
of  the  spinal  cord,  located  in  expanded 
vertebrae  of  the  anterior  spine,  instead 
of  in  coccygeal  vertebrae  or  some 
place  else?  Because  the  forms  of  life 
in  which  it  developed  or  began  to  de- 


184      BETTER-WORLD  PHILOSOPHT 

velop  were  roving  horizontals,  and  the 
foremost  section  of  this  ganglionic 
train,  on  account  of  continual  contact 
with  environment,  out-developed  the 
rest.  Why  are  there  sexes?  In  the 
beginning  of  the  life  process  reproduc- 
tion was  accomplished  by  fission  and 
gemmation.  Why  has  reproduction 
come  to  be  an  enterprise  requiring 
two?  I  do  not  know:  probably  to 
multiply  variations  in  offspring.  But 
it  is  certain  that  very  early  in  the 
life  process  conjugation  prevalently 
superseded  the  original  modes  of  gen- 
eration. And  it  is  altogether  probable 
that  this  transition  took  place,  like  the 
transition  from  the  unicellular  to  the 
multicellular  mode  of  life,  the  transi- 
tion from  the  solitary  to  the  gregarious 
style  of  existence,  and  other  transitions 
from  individualism  to  socialism,  as  a 
result  of  that  advantage  which  ema- 
nates from  the  pooling  of  interests  and 
destinies.  The  aquatic  genesis  of  life 
has  been  one  of  the  most  conspicuously 


TPIE  NATURES  OF  LIVING  BEINGS     185 

influential  facts  of  biological  evolution. 
So  many  of  the  structural  idiosyn- 
crasies of  animals  (and  plants)  have 
been  developed  to  defend  an  enter- 
prise primarily  marine  against  atmos- 
pheric desiccation.  If  life,  instead  of 
originating  in  the  sea  and  afterward 
fitting  itself  to  atmospheric  and  sub- 
terranean conditions,  had  originated  in 
the  air  and  subsequently  entered  the 
earth  or  the  waters,  or  if  it  had  been 
transplanted  from  some  differently 
conditioned  planet  and  been  compelled 
to  adapt  itself  to  mundane  arrange- 
ments, the  life  process,  it  is  highly 
interesting  to  imagine,  would  have 
been  an  altogether  different,  and  let 
us  hope  less  riotous,  aggregation  than 
the  one  we  now  contemplate. 

The  peculiarities  of  plants,  also,  all 
of  them,  like  those  of  animals,  have 
been  the  result  of  environmental  selec- 
tions. 

The  natures  of  the  beings  that  live 
upon  the  earth  to-day,  then,  are  made 


l86      BETTER-WORLD  PHILOSOPHT 

up  of  instincts,  certain  general  tenden- 
cies to  move,  which,  in  common  with 
their  physical  accompaniments,  have 
been  impressed  upon  them  by  that 
which  has  during  the  past  surrounded 
them.  The  instincts  of  a  living  being 
do  not  necessarily  represent  all  of  the 
elements  of  all  the  environments  thru 
which  it,  during  its  ancestral  pilgrim- 
age, has  passed;  for  many  have  prob- 
ably been  superseded.  But  every 
prevalent  instinct,  every  prevalent  style 
of  conduct,  indicates  that  the  being  or 
aggregate  possessing  it  has  at  some 
period  in  its  evolution  been  in  an  en- 
vironment which  produced  and  popu- 
larized that  particular  instinct.  The 
life  process,  starting  from  simple,  al- 
most impulseless,  initials,  but  with  an 
inherent  tendency  to  vary,  has  heaved 
itself  onward  and  upward,  dispatching 
from  its  central  trend  multiples  of 
the  most  fantastic  ramifications,  until 
to-day  it  is  a  genealogical  arbor  of 
something  like  a  million  branches, 


THE  NATURES  Of  LIVING  BEINGS     187 

philosophers  at  top  and  monera  at 
base,  and  occupying  in  all  its  general 
delineaments,  psychical  and  physical, 
that  outline  assigned  by  environmental 
opportunity. 

All  evolution  is  achieved  by  selec- 
tion, and  all  selection  is  determined  by 
environment.  Environment  is  a  trinity: 
the  inanimate  environment,  the  animate 
environment,  and  the  internal  environ- 
ment. The  inanimate  environment  is 
that  mechanism  of  things  in  the  midst 
of  which  the  life  process  exists.  The 
living  beings  of  all  kinds  outside  of  and 
surrounding  that  which  is  environed 
constitute  the  animate  environment. 
And  by  internal  environment  is  meant 
that  which  is  environed  itself,  the  in- 
fluence of  a  self  upon  itself,  individual 
and  social  self-determinativeness.  The 
selective  activities  of  these  three  ele- 
ments of  environment  have  produced 
all  of  the  dispositional  and  structural 
peculiarities  to  be  found  in  the  seas, 
soils,  and  atmospheres  of  the  earth  to- 


1 88      BETTER-WORLD  PHTLOSOPIIT 

day,  all  of  those  that  have  in  times 
past  lived  and  perished,  and  the  mil- 
lions that  shall  appear  till  the  life  pro- 
cess is  no  longer. 

The  inanimate  is  the  fundamental 
of  things,  the  substratum  upon  which 
the  possibilities  rear  themselves.  Be- 
fore life  was,  it  was,  and  it  will  be  when 
life's  last  inertia  is  spent.  Out  of  its 
mysterious  parts  the  life  process  came, 
and  upon  its  hard  herbage  and  by  the 
grace  of  its  scanty  tolerances  it  sur- 
vives. The  inanimate  is  the  mighty 
trellis  about  whose  inhospitable  parts 
the  tendrils  of  sentiency  creep.  It  is 
the  riddle,  the  catastrophe,  and  the  sine 
qua  non  of  the  enterprise  of  conscious- 
ness. The  inanimate  is  and  has  always 
been  indifferent  to  life,  and  for  this 
reason  it  has  been  indefatigable  in 
its  selections.  It  has  no  ears  for  dis- 
tress, no  eyes  for  injustice,  and  no 
sympathy  for  the  unsophisticated.  Its 
hardships,  of  food,  climate,  and  cata- 
clysm have  entered  with  tireless  energy 


THE  NATURES  OF  LIVING  BEINGS     189 

into  the  destinies  of  the  conscious- 
nesses. It  must  have  been  some 
unprecedented  scarcity  of  nutrition 
that  originated  that  coarse  and  fearful 
manifestation  of  egoism,  carnivorous- 
ness.  The  continual  concussion  of  the 
living  and  the  non-living  probably  de- 
veloped to  a  considerable  extent  sen- 
sation and  intelligence.  Hands,  the 
most  faithful  and  effectual  of  anatomi- 
cal contrivances,  and  perpendicularity, 
a  stylish  but  questionable  idiosyncrasy, 
and  wings,  those  aerial  levers  which 
make  locomotion  grace,  were  all  prob- 
ably imparted  to  the  life  process  dur- 
ing its  arboreal  reconnoissance. 

The  animate  environment  has  been 
the  most  formidable  factor  in  the  evo- 
lution of  mundane  life.  The  inanimate 
has  been  indifferent.  The  animate 
has  not  been  so.  It  has  been  relent- 
less. While  the  ages  were  yet  tender, 
life  began  to  riot  upon  life,  and  it  has 
continued  to  do  so  to  this  moment. 
Where  the  inanimate  has  slain  and 


190       BETTER-WORLD   PHILOSOPHT 

selected  one,  the  animate  has  slain 
multitudes.  It  is  estimated  that  the 
life  process  is  now  about  twenty  millions 
of  years  old.  Its  existence  has  been 
one  unbroken  bacchanal  of  blood. 
Aggregate  has  preyed  upon  aggregate 
and  species  has  decimated  species. 
Tides  of  irresponsibles  have  swept  over 
the  continents  and  thru  the  deeps, 
collided,  grappled,  and  exterminated 
each  other.  What  is  hidden  in  the 
horrible  chasm  between  monera  and 
man,  no  fancy  will  ever  illume.  It  is 
the  mighty  charnal  of  creation.  The 
skeletons  of  two  millions  of  extermi- 
nated species  of  living  beings  are  there 
with  all  their  unimaginable  accompani- 
ments— wars,  blacknesses,  frightful 
manglings,  eclipses,  horrible  concus- 
sions, inextinguishable  malignities, 
hell.  Imagine,  if  you  can,  and  you 
can  not,  the  amount  of  inconsideration 
and  violence  necessary,  by  the  outright 
destruction,  age  after  age,  of  inferiors, 
to  develop  an  organism  of  such  hope- 


THE  NATURES  OF  LIVING  BEINGS     191 

less  structural  monotony  as  the  monad 
to  an  animal  as  highly  specialized  as 
the  fish.  Think  of  what  would  be  neces- 
sary to  lift  life  from  its  aquatic  cradle 
out  upon  the  land,  to  convert  a  fish, 
breathing  water  and  wearing  fins  and 
gills  and  scales,  into  a  quadruped  with 
legs  and  lungs  and  hair.  Contemplate 
again  what  it  would  take  to  convert  a 
waddling  marsupial  into  a  quasi-per- 
pendicular anthropoid.  Conjecture 
what  must  have  happened  in  the  post- 
anthropoid  ages  of  evolution,  when 
those  rude-browed,  half-crouching  an- 
cestors of  ours,  with  clubs  and  missiles, 
moved  thru  the  forests  and  mountains 
in  conquest  of  the  earth.  For  it  must 
be  remembered  that  there  was  a  time 
when  no  set  of  beings  tyrannized  and 
terrorized  the  planet  as  do  the  reign- 
ing cutthroats  to-day.  Estimate  finally, 
if  you  can,  and  history  will  help  you, 
the  amount  of  bloodshed  and  war  and 
woe  necessary  to  develop  those  un- 
finished Troglodytes  into  beings  clever 


192       BETTER-WORLD  PHILOSOPHY 

enough  to  write  history  and  invent  gin 
and  originate  the  hope  of  heaven. 
Compute  these  totalities,  and  you  will 
know  what  it  has  cost  to  teach  you  and 
me  and  the  rest  to  talk  politics  and  wax 
sarcastic  with  our  fore  limbs  in  the  air. 
Question:  If  it  has  required  two  or 
three  millions  of  species  struggling  for 
life  twenty  millions  of  years  to  produce 
a  being  barely  above  derision,  how 
long  will  it  take  and  how  many  millions 
of  species  to  evolve  a  being  as  nearly 
divine  as  the  average  man  thinks  he  is? 
The  internal  environment  is,  as  has 
been  said,  the  influence  of  the  aggre- 
gate or  individual  itself  in  its  aggregate 
or  individual  capacity,  the  individual 
or  aggregate  exercising  self-selection, 
social  or  individual  self-culture.  The 
life  process  as  a  whole  is  devoid  of 
this  environment,  because  there  is  not 
and  has  never  been  any  organic  relation 
among  the  groups  and  sub-groups  of 
which  it  is  composed.  The  groups,  or 
aggregates,  have  not  been  independent 


THE  NATURES  OF  LIVING  BEINGS     193 

of  each  other,  but  their  dependence 
has  not  been  systemic.  The  life 
process  has  not  been  conscious.  Its 
career  has  been  accidental  rather  than 
intentional.  Internal  environment  ex- 
ists where  organization  exists,  where 
corporate  consciousness  exists,  and  in 
so  far  as  it  exists.  It  is  teleologic. 
The  promiscuous  action  of  individuals 
as  individuals  upon  other  individuals 
of  the  same  aggregate,  like  the  influ- 
ence of  individuals  and  aggregates  of 
the  process  as  a  whole  on  other  indi- 
viduals and  aggregates,  belongs  to  the 
animate  element  of  environment.  In 
purely  individualistic  societies,  there- 
fore, where  the  conduct  of  each  is  de- 
termined exclusively  by  himself,  there 
can  be  no  internal  environment  of  the 
social  sort,  because  there  is  no  organic 
interlacement  of  concern.  It  is  in  col- 
lectivistic  aggregates,  where  the  con- 
duct of  each  conditions  to  a  greater  or 
less  extent  the  conduct  of  others  and 
is  conditioned  by  others,  where  each 


194       BETTER-WORLD   PHILOSOPHY 

individual  blends  to  some  degree  into 
and  is  partially  exterminated  by  the 
composite  consciousness,  that  the  in- 
ternal environment  exists. 

The  internal  environment  has  per- 
formed a  subordinate  role  in  the  past 
evolutions  of  life.  Aggregates  have 
thruout  the  past  exerted  an  immeasur- 
ably greater  influence  upon  each  other 
than  they  have  exerted  each  upon 
itself.  Excepting  among  some  social- 
istic insects,  and  in  the  cell  socialism  of 
metazoa,  there  is  no  internal  environ- 
ment of  consequence  outside  of  human 
aggregates.  But  among  all  human 
societies,  excepting  perhaps  the  very 
lowest,  the  internal  environment  has 
exercised  an  increasingly  conspicuous 
influence  upon  the  destinies  of  the 
races.  The  internal  environment,  which 
is  nothing  more  nor  less  than  Society, 
which  is  intense  and  conscious  gregari- 
ousness,  which  is  the  functional  partici- 
pation of  individuals  in  a  more  or  less 
organic  oneness,  must  have  been  era- 


THE  NATURES  OF  LIVING  BEINGS     195 

died  in  those  terrible  ages  when  our 
post-anthropoid  ancestors  wandered  in 
heroic  herds  over  the  unconquered 
continents.  It  comprehends  all  dis- 
plays of  social  sovereignty,  from  the 
crude  coordinations  effected  by  the 
chief  of  an  aggregate  of  savages  to 
those  ponderous  and  complicated  func- 
tions performed  by  the  governmental 
machinery  of  civilized  states. 

The  evolution  of  the  attitude  of  the 
life  process  toward  itself,  the  animate, 
has  been  analogous  to  the  evolution  of 
its  attitude  toward  the  inanimate.  Both 
attitudes  have  evolved  from  conditions 
of  indifference  to  those  of  continually 
increasing  aggression.  The  earliest 
forms  of  life  were  simple  suggestions 
of  protoplasm  wafted  hither  and  thither 
by  the  environing  waters.  Devoid  of 
all  powers  of  initiative,  and  in  some 
instances  anchored,  they  were  at  the 
absolute  caprice  of  their  environment. 
They  appropriated  whatever  food  came 
in  contact  with  them,  and  fell  victims 


196      BETTER-WORLD   PHILOSOPHT 

to  every  rambling  adversity.  They 
were  undifferentiated  cellules  of  help- 
less plasm  buffeted  at  the  caprice  of 
an  irresponsible  universe.  From  this 
state  of  inertia,  by  the  continual  sur- 
vival of  the  energetic  and  enterprising, 
the  life  process  has  evolved  into  a  most 
insistent  and  marvelous  dominance  of 
the  inanimate.  None  of  the  non- 
human  animals  uses  tools,  which  are 
portions  of  the  inanimate  universe  used 
to  accomplish  the  domination  of  other 
portions.  Even  among  primitive  men 
the  appliances  for  modifying  the  inani- 
mate world  are  few  and  rudimentary. 
Among  civilized  societies,  however,  as 
was  indicated  in  the  first  chapter,  the 
conquests  of  industry,  which  are  subju- 
gations of  the  inanimate  by  the  ani- 
mate, are  almost  sensational.  Tools 
have  not  only  attained  a  wonderful 
pitch  of  proficiency,  but  they  are  com- 
bined and  compounded  into  mighty 
machines,  for  the  manipulation  of 


THE  NATURES  OF  LIVING  BEINGS     197 

which  inanimate  tendencies  themselves 
have  been  domesticated  and  trained. 

The  attitude  of  the  animate  universe 
toward  the  animate  universe,  that  is, 
toward  itself,  has  followed  an  evolution 
analogous  to  that  followed  in  the 
evolution  of  its  attitude  toward  the 
inanimate.  The  control  of  themselves 
by  associated  beings,  like  the  control 
of  the  inanimate,  is  seriously  attempted 
only  by  the  highest  orders  of  sentients. 
Among  all  the  non-human  aggregates, 
with  the  mentioned  exceptions,  the 
individuals  of  one  group  mingle  indis- 
criminately with  the  individuals  of 
other  groups  and  with  each  other. 
They  associate  as  sovereigns,  not  as 
constitutents  of  an  organism.  Social 
organization,  social  self-modification, 
social  self-management,  is  genuinely 
manifested  only  among  human  socie- 
ties. It  has  developed  with  the  pro- 
cession of  the  races,  and  among  the 
very  foremost  societies  a  comparatively 


198      BETTER-WORLD  PHILOSOPHT 

high  degree  of  social  self-determina- 
tiveness exists.  Social  self-dominance 
has  been  developed  by  the  survival  of 
the  more  intricately  knit  groups  in  the 
struggle  for  life. 

It  must  not  be  supposed  that  self- 
dominance,  whether  exercised  by  an 
individual  living  being,  or  by  a  society, 
means  the  cessation  of  struggle  and 
survival,  and  that  the  character  of  the 
selections  is  determined  by  some 
spontaneous,  self-poised  something  or 
somebody  independent  of  the  phe- 
nomena of  time  and  space.  Social 
self-control,  or  social  self-culture,  means 
simply  definite  and  intelligent  atten- 
tion to  the  struggle  and  survival  among 
the  masses  of  the  society  itself  and 
the  methodization  of  that  struggle, 
just  as  individual  self-culture  means 
the  measurement  of  the  struggles  go- 
ing on  among  the  instincts  of  an  indi- 
vidual consciousness,  and  a  conscious 
recognition  of  their  relative  strengths 
and  enthusiasms. 


THE  NATURES  OF  LIVING  BEINGS     199 

It  must  not  be  concluded,  either,  that 
the  life  process  in  its  more  ambitious 
and  more  conscious  portions  is  less 
correlated  with  the  inanimate  than  it  is 
in  its  humblest.  Every  part  of  the 
universe  is  related  by  law  to  every  other 
part.  A  modern  state  is  just  as  inex- 
orably conditioned  in  its  phenomena 
by  the  material  order  of  things  about 
it  as  a  rabble  of  comparatively  mind- 
less mollusks.  The  philosopher  is  less 
helpless,  but  is.  not  less  carefully  corre- 
lated with  his  environment,  than  is  the 
amceba,  or  the  particular  embryo  from 
which  he  individually  sprang.  He  is 
more  complex  and  potential  and  pre- 
tentious, but  he  is  not  more  automatic. 
Automatism  is  unthinkable  among  the 
integers  of  an  organic  infinite.  The 
life  process  proceeded  from  the  inani- 
mate, and  it  can  never  for  one  moment 
forget  its  origin.  Living  beings  are 
more  or  less  detached  and  complicated 
fragments  of  the  ball  earth.  They 
float  in  its  fluids  and  strut  over  its  sur- 


200      BETTER-WORLD  PHILOSOPHY 

faces,  and  aggregate,  but  in  all  their 
physical  phenomena  they  simulate  the 
inanimate.  Living  beings  are  not 
aerolites  compounded  of  clays  from 
another  and  altogether  different  order 
of  things,  and  surreptitiously  dropped 
here.  They  have  been  compounded, 
all  of  them,  from  material  which  has 
been  obtained,  all  of  it,  right  here  on 
this  planet — material  the  elements  of 
which  are  identical  with  those  that 
glitter  in  the  soils,  skies,  and  seas. 
And  in  all  their  phenomena,  individual 
and  social,  living  beings  obey  the  same 
chemical  and  physical  tendencies  as 
the  inanimate.  Consciousness  arises 
with,  or  out  of,  and  accompanies,  these 
clay  compounds  called  creatures,  but 
it  does  not  cause,  nor  in  any  way  in- 
terfere with,  their  phenomena.  If  it 
were  possible  to  construct  artificial 
clods,  chemically  as  accomplished  as 
philosophers,  but  without  any  accom- 
panying consciousness,  these  soulless 


THE  NATURES  OF  LIVING  BEINGS     2OI 

mechanisms,  without  will,  feeling,  or 
conscious  intelligence,  simply  acting 
out  their  chemical  and  physical  affini- 
ties, would  not  behave  otherwise  in 
any  infinitesimal  particular  than  the 
real,  conscious  meditators  on  things. 


RACE   CULTURE 

The  character  of  the  generative 
stream  has  been  imparted  to  it  by 
amendments  made  by  environmental 
selection.  A  generation  of  beings 
have  come  into  existence.  They  have 
been  of  various  disparities  of  form, 
color,  structure,  and  disposition.  The 
universe  has  been  decimative.  Some 
have  escaped,  and,  reproducing  them- 
selves, have  imparted,  or  have  tended 
to  impart,  to  the  generations  their  own 
characteristics.  The  great  mass  have 
perished  without  progeny,  and  the 
qualities  which  they  would  have  im- 
parted, or  would  have  tended  to  impart, 
to  the  generations,  if  they  had  lived, 
have  perished,  or  have  tended  to  per- 
ish, with  them.  Since  the  first  proto- 
plasmic specks  sprawled  in  primeval 


RACE   CULTURE  203 

seas,  millions  of  species  and  innumera- 
ble varieties  of  living  beings  have  been 
evolved.  And  they  have  all  been 
evolved  in  this  simple,  horrible  man- 
ner. All  of  the  qualities  of  form, 
color,  structure,  and  disposition  of  ani- 
mals— the  beauty  of  the  gazelle,  the 
immensity  of  the  whale,  the  speed  of 
the  partridge,  the  tenderness  of  the 
hare,  the  sagacity  of  the  philosopher, 
the  altruism  and  pusillanimity  of  men 
— and  all  of  the  styles  of  stem,  foliage, 
and  fruit  of  plants,  have  been  pro- 
duced, all  of  them,  by  the  selection,  or 
survival,  from  generation  to  genera- 
tion, of  the  superior. 

And  tJie  generative  stream  ivill  be 
changed,  or  regenerated,  in  so  far  as  it  is 
in  future  changed  or  regenerated  at  all, 
in  a  manner  the  same  as  that  in  w/iic/i 
it  has  been  generated.  That  is,  any 
quality  of  form,  structure,  or  character, 
which  living  beings  possess  in  future, 
different  from  those  existing  to-day, 
must  be  selected,  or  conserved,  and  this 


204      BETTER-WORLD  PHILOSOPHT 

selection,  or  conservation,  must  be  made 
by  environment.  There  is  no  alterna- 
tive. Future  modifications  of  the  life 
process  must  take  place  according  to 
the  same  general  plan  as  those  that 
have  taken  place  in  the  past.  There 
is  no  way  known  of  re-forming  the 
generative  stream  save  as  it  has  been 
formed. 

The  fundamental  laws  of  heredity, 
we  have  every  reason  to  believe,  will 
always  remain  as  they  are  to-day  and 
as  they  have  been  thruout  the  past. 
Animals  in  the  past  have  in  their  re- 
productions always  approximated  them- 
selves, they  continue  to  do  so  to-day, 
and  there  is  no  reason  for  expecting 
that  they  will  not  continue  to  do  so  to 
the  end  of  time.  Offspring  vary,  but 
not  fundamentally.  Their  variations 
are  incidental.  Foxes  bring  forth  foxes; 
snails  produce  snails;  and  the  children 
of  Caucasians  are,  and  will  always 
continue  to  be,  the  same  pale  dupli- 
cates of  their  progenitors.  Each  being, 


RACE   CULTURE  205 

on  coming  into  existence,  represents  in 
its  make-up  approximately  the  com- 
posite, or  total,  of  the  natures  and 
structures  of  the  authors  of  its  exist- 
ence; and  the  supposition  is  unavoid- 
able that  this  fundamental  fact  of 
heredity  will  never  be  different.  The 
generative  changes  or  reforms  in  future 
must  consist,  therefore,  as  they  have 
in  the  past  consisted,  of  selective  ac- 
centuations of  variations  in  heredity. 
And  these  selections  must  in  future  be 
made  by  the  same  elements  of  environ- 
ment as  have  past  selections.  No  new 
environmental  agency  can  enter  into 
the  selections,  for  the  inanimate,  the 
animate,  and  the  internal  environments 
embrace  the  universe.  The  only  pos- 
sible variation  in  procedure  in  future 
from  what  it  has  been  in  the  past  will 
be  in  the  relative  activities  of  the  three 
elements  of  environment.  Instead  of 
the  chief  selective  activities  being  put 
forth  in  the  future  as  in  the  past  by  the 
animate  environment,  the  internal  en- 


206       BETTER-WORLD  PHILOSOPHY 

vironment  will  be,  among  the  elite,  the 
all-important  element  of  environment 
in  future  evolution.  Human  society  is 
the  van  of  an  evolutional  process  which 
had  its  beginning  away  back  in  prime- 
val seas.  History  is  but  the  remem- 
bered chapter  of  this  evolution.  The 
evolution  effected  by  the  human  race 
during  the  period  of  human  history  has 
been  of  the  same  kind,  and  has  taken 
place  according  to  the  same  laws,  as 
has  pre-historic  evolution.  Sociology 
is  a  department  of  biology.  Civilized 
societies  are  but  branches  of  the  gigan- 
tic arbor  of  life.  Men  are  animals,  and 
human  societies  are  aggregates  of  ani- 
mals, and  they  are  to  be  studied  as  are 
other  aggregates  and  species  of  ani- 
mals. Civilized  states  remain  in  the 
very  universe  where  they  have  been 
evolved.  They  find  themselves  in  the 
midst  of,  and  subject  to,  the  same  laws 
and  influences  as  have  operated  since 
the  beginning  of  life  on  the  planet. 
Evolution  in  human  societies  is  taking 


RACE   CULTURE  207 

place  to-day,  if  it  is  taking  place  at  all, 
and  it  will  take  place  in  the  future,  if 
it  takes  place  at  all,  according  to  the 
same  manner  as  has  all  past  evolution. 
Whatever  styles  of  nature  and  struc- 
ture human  and  other  beings  wear  one 
thousand  years  from  now  different  from 
those  they  wear  at  this  moment,  there- 
fore, will  depend  on  the  character  and 
rigidity  of  the  discriminations  made 
during  the  impending  millenium.  Any 
quality  may  be  imparted,  modified,  or 
effaced.  The  only  indispensable,  aside 
from  a  properly  disposed  heredity,  is 
an  environment  disposed  to  execute 
the  discriminations.  In  one  period  of 
his  evolution,  civilized  man  was  a  sav- 
age; in  another  period  more  remote, 
he  was  an  ape;  in  another,  a  marsupial; 
in  another,  an  amphibian;  and  in  still 
an  earlier  period,  he  was  a  fish.  If 
the  selective  activities  of  environment 
which  have  evolved  this  series  from 
shark  to  gentleman  were  sagaciously 
reversed,  and  those  individuals  were 


208       BETTER-WORLD  PHILOSOPHT 

incessantly  selected  to  survive  who  ap- 
proximated successively  the  savage,  the 
ape,  the  marsupial,  and  the  fish,  a  na- 
tion of  law-making,  pocket-picking, 
glory-hunting  Americans  would,  in  the 
course  of  a  sufficient  number  of  ages, 
lapse  into  a  rabble  of  inglorious,  brine- 
breathing  sea-scourers.  In  his  anthro- 
poid stages  of  evolution,  man  was  cov- 
ered with  hair.  Top-knot  jungles  and 
thickets  on  the  faces  of  males  are 
about  the  only  existing  remnants.  If 
we  would  return  to  the  shaggy  con- 
dition of  primitive  ages,  we  need  only 
acquire  an  environment  which  will 
favor  from  age  to  age  those  whose 
peripheries  retain  to  the  intensest  ex- 
tent the  hirsute  tendency.  If  the  dis- 
parities between  the  sexual  tastes  of 
male  and  female  would  be  leveled  or 
inverted,  the  conditions  which  have 
caused  the  existing  disparity  must  be 
reversed.  The  horse  exposed  to  a  fad 
for  dwarfs  would,  in  the  course  of  ages, 
the  length  of  time  depending  on  the 


RACE   CULTURE  209 

pitch  of  discrimination,  be  dwindled  to 
its  fox-like  proportions  of  eocene  times. 
In  an  environment  requiring  courage, 
foxes  would  either  disappear  or  grow 
heroic.  Serpents  could  be  rendered  as 
loving  as  doves  by  a  procedure  no  more 
laborious  than  that  by  which  they  have 
been  made  vindictive.  And  beardless 
aesthetes  may  become  philosophers  as 
easily  as  have  men.  Human  beings 
are  bigots  and  egoists  almost  to  a 
creature.  They  are  so  because  their 
phyletic  environment  has  fancied  this 
disgusting  cut  of  consciousness.  And 
the  only  possible  way  to  attain,  with 
anything  like  alacrity,  any  other  pat- 
tern is  by  means  of  an  environment 
with  an  enlightened  and  inextinguish- 
able dislike  for  the  prevailing  style  of 
things.  Let  this  truth  be  distinctly  and 
profoundly  realized.  It  is  the  essential 
spark  of  the  illumination.  If  we  would 
bloom  into  beings  of  beauty  and  light, 
we  must  acquire  an  environment  which 
will  insist  on  beings  of  beauty  and  light 


210      BETTER-WORLD  PHILOSOPHY 

as  the  mammas  and  papas  of  posterity. 
If  this  ball  is  ever  other  than  a  globule 
of  alloy,  if  the  universe  ever  experi- 
ences the  long  longed  for  millennium  of 
prophecy  and  hope,  all  must  come  thru 
the  reformed  and  glorified  gateway  of 
the  womb.  Individual,  or  post-natal, 
reformation  is,  and  must  always  be, 
more  or  less  imperfect.  It  is  power- 
less in  determining  the  nature  with 
which  beings  come  into  the  world,  and 
it  is  ineffectual  in  modifying  it  after  it 
is  determined. 

The  most  indefatigable  environment 
can  not  efface,  it  can  only  tamper  with, 
the  instincts  stamped  by  the  womb  into 
the  nature  of  any  being.  Convert  a 
vulture  into  a  kind-hearted  altruist  or 
an  ignoramus  into  a  sage,  and  you  will 
know,  what  I  mean.  Convert  a  being 
with  a  considerable  instinct  for  leisure 
into  a  being  of  industry:  it  is  nearly 
impossible.  An  idler  may  become  in- 
dustrious, but  it  will  be  because  his 
environment  acquires  a  whip — seldom, 


RACE   CULTURE  211 

if  ever,  because  he  has  traded  instincts. 
It  is  chiefly  the  twigs  of  things  that 
post-natal  environment  affects,  and 
then  only  after  long  and  violent  pro- 
ceedings. What  the  universe  needs  is 
not  babes,  but  a  particular  kind  of 
babes — babes  of  genius  and  virtue,  not 
brats  who  must  travel  to  maturity  in 
splints  and  chains  to  keep  them  from 
unhinging  the  universe,  fledglings  who 
need  only  to  bloom  to  be  beautiful, 
generations  white  from  embryo,  pre- 
natally  illuminated  and  refined  babes 
— born  gods.  Individual,  or  post- 
natal, culture  would  not  be  the  futile 
and  interminable  system  of  screws  and 
rods  and  steel  shoes  and  brain-boards 
and  martyrdoms  it  is  to-day,  if  it  in- 
cluded in  its  functions  the  superin- 
tendence of  the  birth,  as  well  as  the 
development,  of  human  souls,  if  it 
planted  as  well  as  pruned,  or,  more 
accurately,  if  it  pruned  aggregates  and 
races  as  well  as  or  instead  of  individuals. 
The  inanimate  element  of  environ- 


212       BETTER-WORLD   PHILOSOPHY 

ment  has  always  been  in  its  destruc- 
tions the  most  indiscriminate  of  all  the 
elements  of  evolution.  It  has  destroyed 
but  not  selected.  The  inanimate  is 
blind.  Its  selective  effects  upon  human 
societies  to-day  are  approximately  the 
same  as  its  effects,  past  and  present, 
upon  non-human  societies.  Its  disas- 
ters of  flood,  flame,  famine,  climate, 
and  the  like  claim  multitudes  of  human 
beings.  But  the  strong  and  the  weak, 
the  evil  and  the  altruistic,  the  gifted 
and  the  gross,  perish  with  pathetic 
impartiality.  The  animate  environ- 
ment, also,  in  so  far  as  it  is  non-human, 
exercises  an  indifferent  influence  on 
human  evolutions.  Man  is  too  talented 
and  too  triumphant  an  animal  to  be 
greatly  affected  by  the  feebler  forms  of 
life  below  and  around  him.  Man  him- 
self is  the  unrivaled  reformer  in  the 
universe  to-day.  He  is  conquering 
and  transforming  the  whole  face  of  the 
planet.  He  selects  at  will.  The  influ- 
ences of  one  human  aggregate  upon 


RACE   CULTURE  213 

another  thru  war,  commerce,  and 
migration  have  to  a  very  large  extent 
produced  the  evolutions  of  human  his- 
tory. Nation  has  overrun  nation,  and 
race  has  exterminated  race.  See  how 
the  Slav  and  Saxon  are  supplanting 
less  powerful  peoples  all  over  the 
world.  Industrial  competition  is  an- 
other considerable  means  of  selection. 
Industry  is  war.  Human  beings  come 
into  the  world  unequally  equipped  for 
this  contest.  The  strong  and  the  re- 
sourceful survive,  and  the  inadequate 
perish  in  the  struggle  for  existence. 
This  is  true  whether  the  competitors 
are  individuals,  classes,  or  kingdoms. 
Perhaps  the  most  judicious  and  relent- 
less selections  among  civilized  states 
are  made  by  those  invisible  organisms 
causing  epidemic  and  contagious  dis- 
eases. Micro-organisms  attack  the 
weak  and  unfortified.  Animals  of 
robust  vitalities  defy  them.  They  are 
everywhere,  and  they  are  as  relentless 
as  wolves.  They  eat  up  the  defective 


214       BETTER-WORLD   PHILOSOPHT 

and  dying  carcasses  of  the  race.  Dis- 
ease is  more  useful  in  promoting  race 
vigor  than  both  war  and  famine.  What 
a  deplorable  thing  from  the  standpoint 
of  race  progress  would  be  the  discovery 
of  a  cure  for  consumption!  This  dis- 
ease has  been  looked  upon  as  one  of 
the  greatest  enemies  of  mankind.  But 
by  fastening  upon  and  carrying  away 
year  after  year  tens  of  thousands  of 
those  physically  inferior,  consumption 
performs  a  service  to  the  race,  in  the 
promotion  of  physical  vigor,  that  is 
almost  incalculable.  Consumption  is 
the  knife  of  the  surgeon — the  dreadful 
forceps  which  relieve  us  of  the  still 
more  dreadful  molar.  It  is  a  sad  sight 
to  look  upon  the  wasted  victims  of  this 
dreadful  malady,  sitting,  with  hectic 
faces  and  shrunken  forms,  awaiting, 
with  no  balm  but  the  lonely  grave,  the 
outrage  of  final  dissolution;  but,  after 
all,  such  sights  are  less  tragic  than  the 
spectacle  of  whole  races  sinking  into 
physical  decay.  Cholera,  scrofula, 


RACE   CULTURE  215 

leprosy,  cancer,  typhus,  diphtheria, 
measles,  whooping  cough,  syphilis,  in- 
fluenza, small-pox — their  victims  are 
like  the  sands  of  the  sea.  They  are  the 
scavengers  that  devour,  terrify,  and 
regenerate  the  race.  A  large  percent- 
age of  human  beings  die  in  infancy. 
Infantile  diseases  are,  therefore,  a 
formidable  factor  in  race  culture.  The 
sickly  perish,  as  a  rule,  and  the  strong 
survive  to  perpetuate  the  race. 

In  nearly  all  of  these  eliminations 
there  is  more  of  physical  selection  than 
of  intellectual,  and  more  of  intellectual 
selection  than  of  moral.  The  resource- 
ful are  somewhat  more  likely  to  survive 
in  war,  in  the  competitions  of  industry, 
and  even  in  times  of  natural  disaster. 
And  to  the  extent  that  they  possess  a 
greater  likelihood  of  survival,  to  that 
extent  there  is  intellectual  selection. 
But  this  is  true  to  a  much  less  extent 
in  disease — especially  in  infantile  dis- 
eases. And  moral  selection  in  nearly 
all  of  these  cases  can  hardly  be  said  to 


2l6       BETTER-WORLD  PHILOSOPHY 

exist.  Moral  progress  has  probably  been 
accomplished  more  thru  race  experience 
than  thru  selection.  Men  have  found 
it  better  to  tolerate  each  other  than  to 
quarrel  and  fight.  They  refrain  from 
quarreling  and  fighting  more  because 
of  policy  or  fear  than  from  natural  im- 
pulse. The  outbreaks  of  barbarism 
among  civilized  communities  when  fear 
is  removed  furnish  evidence  of  this  fact. 
It  is  doubtful  whether  the  cradles  of 
Massachusetts  contain  infants  innately 
much  nobler  than  did  the  arms  of  those 
barbarians  who  came  on  the  north 
wind  and  settled  England  so  many 
centuries  ago.  The  children  of  Mas- 
sachusetts grow  up  in  a  nobler  atmos- 
phere. 

Moral  selection  is  exercised  by 
human  societies  in  the  discriminations 
which  they  everywhere  wage  against 
their  criminal  and  injurious  elements. 
Evolution  is  discrimination,  or  the 
result  of  it,  and  the  alacrity  of  the  evo- 
lution depends  on  the  energy  of  the 


RACE   CULTURE  217 

discrimination.  But  any  discrimina- 
tion, however  insensible,  exercised  per- 
sistently thru  vast  measures  of  time, 
promotes  evolution.  The  hardships, 
formal  and  informal,  dealt  out  by 
society  to  its  unworthy  members  may 
seem  slight  so  far  as  their  reformatory 
effects  on  the  generative  stream  are 
concerned;  but  ages  of  such  intolerance 
make  appreciably  for  righteousness. 
A  selfish  or  dishonest  member  of 
society  becomes  more  or  less  of  an 
outcast  and  the  victim  of  a  thousand 
discriminations.  He  is  distrusted,  pun- 
ished, and  perhaps  incarcerated,  and 
his  likelihood  of  representation  in  the 
next  generation  is  immensely  dimin- 
ished. All  the  punishments,  reproaches, 
ostracisms,  imprisonments,  and  elimi- 
nations, all  the  social  intolerances  so 
tirelessly  waged  everywhere  by  society 
against  its  vicious  and  egoistic  mem- 
bers, and  all  the  honors  and  emolu- 
ments conferred  upon  the  exemplary, 
while  they  are  designed  primarily  to 


218      BETTER-WORLD  PHILOSOPHT 

protect  the  living  generation  only,  yet 
possess,  when  continued  thru  ages, 
distinct  evolutional  value. 

And  here  it  may  not  be  improper  to 
digress  briefly  on  the  function  of 
punishment  in  the  social  economy. 
There  is  so  much  of  awkwardness  and 
inhumanity  in  the  effort  put  forth  by 
society  to  protect  itself  against  its 
injurious  elements  that  any  digression 
that  will  lend  consciousness  to  the 
matter  would  seem  eminently  apropos. 

Penalties  are  the  teeth  of  society; 
but  what  right  has  society  to  have 
teeth?  Happiness  is  supposed  to  be 
the  end  for  which  society  is  striving; 
and  why  does  society  deliberately 
diminish  its  happiness  by  administer- 
ing misery  to  its  members?  Suppose 
crimes  have  been  committed  ;  is  it 
righteous  or  sane  for  society  to  per- 
petrate reciprocal  crimes  and  entail 
additional  misery? 

The  primitive  function  of  punish- 
ment was  revenge.  Revenge  is  a  burn- 


RACE   CULTURE  219 

ing  in  one  who  has  been  harmed  to 
reciprocate  injury.  It  is  a  passion 
growing  out  of  combativeness,  and 
rages  with  immense  sincerity  among 
all  savage  and  semi-civilized  peoples, 
occasional  cases  having  been  observed 
even  among  philosophers.  When  a 
savage  is  injured,  he  is  immediately 
afflicted  with  this  very  painful  in- 
flammation, and  in  order  to  relieve  his 
sufferings,  he  maintains  the  privilege 
of  inflicting  like  harm  on  his  offender 
or  on  his  offenders.  The  original 
wrong  is  in  this  way  supposed  to  be 
obliterated,  or  avenged,  and  fever 
ceases  to  burn  the  blood  of  the  injured. 
The  function  of  punishment  was,  there- 
fore, in  the  primitive  regime,  to  re- 
establish serenity  in  the  tormented  soul 
of  the  aggrieved. 

Revenge  is  an  instinct  which  was 
evolved  in  the  natures  of  struggling 
beings  by  the  incessant  elimination  of 
the  meek — an  instinct  which  is  not 
without  meaning  in  an  individualistic 


220      BETTER-WORLD   PHILOSOPHT 

chaos  of  things,  but  which  has  no 
utility  or  justification  in  a  state  of  or- 
ganized cooperativism.  If  a  wrong 
has  been  done  or  illfare  inflicted,  it  is 
always  and  wholly  reprehensible  to 
inflict  reciprocal  wrong  just  for  the 
sentimental  sake  of  it. 

Punishment  must  be  judged  by  its 
utilities.  An  act  of  punishment  is  a 
species  of  conduct,  and  like  all  other 
conduct,  it  is  good  or  bad  as  it  dimin- 
ishes or  increases  the  illfare  of  living 
beings.  Punishment  is,  therefore,  per 
se,  an  evil,  because  it  is  an  addition  to 
the  misery  of  the  universe.  The  in- 
trinsic evil  of  punishment  may  be 
atoned  for,  however,  by  that  which  it 
obviates.  All  deliberate  'inflictions 
of  misery  by  one  living  being  or 
aggregate  of  living  beings  on  an- 
other living  being  or  aggregate,  in 
consequence  of  invasions  of  welfare, 
have  one  and  only  one  justifica- 
tion —  the  supposition  that  the  in- 
flicted misery  will  forestall  a  larger 


RACE   CULTURE  221 

misery  which  could  not  in  any  more 
graceful  manner  be  prevented.  The 
absolute  and  only  function  of  punish- 
ment is  to  reform  the  one'receiving  the 
punishment  and  to  deter  others  of  like 
impulses.  No  misery  should  be  in- 
flicted upon  a  criminal  because  he  has 
done  a  wrong,  but  because  he  and 
others  have  dispositions  to  do  other 
wrongs.  The  function  of  punishment 
is  not  to  "satisfy"  in  some  mysterious 
sense  a  past  offense,  but  to  provide 
against  and  curtail  future  offenses. 
Savagery  should  be  condemned  and 
terrorized  and  philanthropy  applauded, 
not  because  the  one  class  of  conduct 
is  less  inevitable  than  the  other,  but 
solely  to  encourage  the  one  to  dis- 
appear from  the  universe  and  to 
enable  the  other  to  prevail  and  mul- 
tiply. The  purpose  of  all  penal 
schemes  should  be,  not  reciprocity,  but 
reformation  pure  and  simple  ;  not  the 
relentless  and  absurd  infliction  of 
misery  commensurate  with  the  crimes 


222       BETTER-WORLD  PHILOSOPHT 

committed,  but  the  achievement  of  the 
largest  possible  reformation  with  the 
gentlest  and  most  strategic  deprivation. 

The  schemes  of  post-mortem  pun- 
ishment, therefore,  such  as  the  theolo- 
gians contemplate,  the  infliction  of  an 
eternity  of  retribution  on  miscreants 
whose  deeds  are  all  done,  is  a  concep- 
tion to  be  pitied  rather  than  refuted. 
Hell,  as  a  scarecrow  and  a  fiction  to 
startle  timid  scoundrels  here  on  the 
earth,  is  an  institution  with  meaning, 
but  as  a  fact  to  be  felt  and  realized,  it 
is  without  sense. 

The  purpose  of  punishment  is  the 
same  everywhere,  whether  the  punish- 
ment is  administered  as  a  reproach  for 
accidents  and  improprieties,  or  as  an 
accompaniment  of  public  law,  and 
whether  it  is  imposed  by  society  upon 
an  individual,  or  whether  it  is  volunta- 
rily imposed  by  an  individual  upon 
himself.  A  society  which  imparts  mis- 
ery to  its  members  in  order  to  prevent 
worse  miseries  in  future  is  actuated  by 


RACE   CULTURE  223 

the  same  pitch  of  intelligence  as  an 
individual  who  voluntarily  undergoes 
arduous  or  dangerous  toil  in  order  to 
avoid  starvation. 

The  logic  of  punishment  is  to  make 
it  easier  to  do  right.  Punishment 
revolutionizes  motive,  and  makes  the 
perpendicular  possible  to  those  who 
would  not  otherwise  wear  it.  Motives 
which,  without  penalties,  provoke 
crime,  with  them  prompt  rectitude.  A 
being  who.  would  steal  the  watch  of 
another,  if  there  were  no  penalty,  re- 
frains from  the  crime  in  the  presence 
of  probable  penalty,  because  the  mis- 
ery of  the  probable  penalty  is  greater 
than  the  probable  pleasure  he  would 
derive  from  the  timepiece. 

Punishments,  deprivations  of  some 
sort,  are  necessary  to  protect  society 
from  the  attacks  of  its  inadequately 
evolved  members.  But  they  should 
be  administered  with  delicacy  and 
economy.  The  nicest  strategies  should 
be  studied,  in  order  that  the  softest 


224      BETTER-WORLD  PHILOSOPHY 

totality  of  hardship  may  accomplish 
the  largest  amount  of  prevention. 
The  clumsy  enthusiasm  of  revenge 
should  be  displaced  by  clemency  and 
regret.  The  criminal  should  be  con- 
sidered and  pitied,  not  despised.  He 
simply  complies  with  the  nature  with 
which  he  came  into  the  world,  modified 
by  the  environment  in  which  he  has 
lived,  the  same  as  does  every  other 
being  who  breathes.  You  or  I,  with 
identical  heredity  and  environment, 
would  do  identical  deeds.  Measured 
by  his  ability  to  do  otherwise,  the  vil- 
lain is  not  less  divine  than  the  humani- 
tarian. Every  creature  acts  out  the 
impulses  which  arise  in  his  own  con- 
sciousness, and  the  will  cannot  create, 
but  simply  registers,  those  impulses. 
Punishment  is  one  of  the  means  pos- 
sessed by  society  for  its  self-culture, 
and  its  administration  should  not  be 
made  an  opportunity  for  pugilistic 
cocks  to  color  their  spurs. 

If  the  spirit  of  retribution  were  ex- 


RACE   CULTURE  225 

tinct,  and  the  function  of  punishment 
were  really  understood,  I  suspect  that 
other  ways,  less  shocking  and  just  as 
effectual,  would  be  devised  for  the  con- 
version of  sinners.  Most  of  the  crimes 
and  clumsinesses  perpetrated  upon 
criminals  are  the  ferocities  of  ruffians 
perpetrated  to  satisfy  the  anachronistic 
instinct  of  revenge.  They  are  not  es- 
sentially intended  to  benefit  either 
criminals  or  society,  but  to  allay  inflam- 
mation in  the  minds  of  the  perpetra- 
tors. Let  society  come  to  pity  its 
wayward  ones,  and  to  realize  the 
coarseness  of  crucifixion,  and  reforma- 
tories, with  their  mild  and  ameliorating 
procedures  will  supplant  the  dungeon 
and  the  scaffold  as  implements  of  re- 
generation. Evil  instincts  must  be 
bereft  of  opportunity  for  exercise,  but 
every  consideration  demands  that  the 
deprivations  shall  be  useful  and  con- 
scious, and  shall  be  such  as  allow  the 
leading  of  lives  as  unrestrained  and 
as  valuable  in  themselves  as  possible. 


226      BETTER-WORLD   PHILOSOPHY 

Thousands  of  susceptible  souls  are  to- 
day languishing  in  torture-chambers, 
suffering  infernos  of  useless  immure- 
ment, who  ought  simply  to  be  in- 
structed in  the  psychology  of  self- 
control. 

A  very  large  percentage  of  criminals 
are  the  victims  of  industrial  condi- 
tions. They  were  driven  to  their 
deeds  by  economic  impalement.  Un- 
able to  conquer  a  livelihood  on  account 
of  the  preempted  condition  of  oppor- 
tunities and  the  finiteness  of  their  own 
powers,  they  chose  violence  as  a  last 
horrible  resort.  If  they  had  not  been 
endowed  with  an  instinct  to  live,  they 
might  have  lain  down  peacefully  and 
passed  away,  if  they  could  have  found 
some  monopolist  gracious  enough  to 
allow  to  them  six  feet  of  his  dominions 
as  a  ceasing-couch.  But  being,  like 
other  sons  of  mortals,  too  fastidious  to 
rot,  they  did  the  only  thing  possible  to 
avoid  it.  This  large  class  of  offenders 
do  not  need  penal  institutions  to 


RACE   CULTURE  227 

regenerate  them.  They  need  justice. 
They  are  already  honorable.  Society 
robbed  them — robbed  them  of  the  very 
refuse  of  existence — and  they  simply 
attempted  to  regain  in  some  measure 
that  which  was  by  right  theirs.  Dun-* 
geons  are  damnable  which  immure 
souls  whose  only  sin  is  the  enthusiasm 
to  live.  When  men,  capable  and  eager, 
traverse  the  land  in  sad-eyed  armies, 
season  after  season,  seeking  opportu- 
nity to  earn  honest  nutrition,  and  seek- 
ing in  vain  for  even  the  ravellings  of 
existence,  the  marvel  is,  that  they  are 
so  patient— the  marvel  is,  that  they  do 
not  in  an  epileptic  of  despair  leap  at 
the  throat  of  society,  and  exact  from 
its  rich  jugulars  that  which  the  simplest 
justice  adjudicates  to  them. 

The  selective  influences  of  the  ani- 
mate and  inanimate  elements  of  human 
environment  are  vigorously  neutral- 
ized by  the  ameliorative  and  collectiv- 
istic  tendencies  of  civilization.  The 
weak  are  boldly  suckled,  and  the  dis- 


228       BETTER-WORLD  PHILOSOPHY 

eased  have  ceased  to  die  with  anything 
like  alacrity.  Wars,  especially  wars 
of  extermination,  are  comparatively 
seldom,  and  they  are  destined  to  be- 
come more  and  more  so.  Socialism, 
that  state  into  which  the  genteel  world 
is  inevitably  slipping,  purposes  to  mini- 
mize in  every  possible  manner  the 
hereditary  discriminations  of  the  inani- 
mate. No  existing  society  of  men 
actually  equalizes  the  opportunities  of 
its  members  in  the  struggle  for  life,  but 
all  civilized  societies  tend  to  do  so. 
Might  is  not  the  synonym  of  right 
among  any  beings  excelling  barbarism. 
Society  goes  further  in  its  preservation 
of  the  unfit  than  to  protect  the  weak 
from  the  powerful.  It  compels  the 
powerful  in  many  instances  to  succor 
the  weak.  It  balances  abilities  as  well 
as  equalizes  opportunities.  The  well- 
equipped  classes  share  their  talents 
and  fortunes  with  the  scantily  equipped. 
Asylums  for  the  blind,  deaf,  maimed, 


RACE    CULTURE  229 

orphaned,  aged,  poor,  epileptic,  insane, 
inebriate,  incurable,  etc.,  are  institu- 
tions by  means  of  which  society  par- 
ticipates in  the  privations  of  its  less 
fortunate.  Public  schools,  sustained 
by  the  opulent  but  patronized  equally 
by  the  poor,  charities  and  benevolences 
of  all  kinds,  all  mutualizations  such  as 
the  nationalization  and  municipaliza- 
tion  of  industries,  all  efforts  put  forth 
by  society  as  an  organism  to  molify 
the  hardships  falling  on  its  unfit,  are 
influences  tending  to  neutralize  the  selec- 
tive tendencies  of  tJie  animate  and  inani- 
mate elements  of  environment.  Another 
fact  tending  to  retard  evolution  is  the 
comparative  sterility  of  the  capable 
classes.  The  ignorant  have  large 
families,  and  the  cultured  are  often 
childless.  The  laborer  has,  on  an 
average,  twice  as  many  children  as  the 
lawyer.  Men  and  women  of  ambition 
enter  matrimony  late  in  life  and  are 
sparing  in  offspring.  The  artist  and 


230      BETTER-WORLD  PHILOSOPHY 

the  genius  desire  leisure,  and  are  re- 
luctant to  assume  the  duties  and  bur- 
dens of  matrimony. 

Perhaps  the  greatest  checks  upon 
natural  selection  come  from  the  scien- 
tific treatment  of  disease.  Many  of 
the  most  destructive  diseases  are 
actually  disappearing  before  the  bril- 
liant discoveries  of  modern  medicine. 
A  tolerably  successful  cure  for  con- 
sumption has  just  been  announced.  It 
is  now  evidence  of  ignorance  or  neglect 
for  a  patient  to  die  of  typhoid.  The 
fatalities  from  contagious  disease  have 
been  reduced  fifty  per  cent  in  the 
last  fifty  years.  Many  micro-organisms 
have  been  banished  to  remote  parts  of 
the  earth.  Small-pox,  once  one  of  the 
most  dreadful  of  pestilences,  is  now 
scarcely  known.  There  are  props  and 
appliances  and  panaceas  for  almost  all 
the  ills  and  disabilities  of  the  race. 
Infantile  hygiene  has  astonishingly 
reduced  the  mortalities  of  that  most 
dangerous  period  of  life.  A  human 


RACE    CULTURE  231 

babe  comes  into  the  world.  The  sci- 
ence of  obstetrics  stands  by  and  sees 
that  it  is  successfully  born.  If  it  is 
sickly  and  liable  to  be  pounced  upon 
by  bacilli,  it  is  hedged  about  by  sani- 
tary precautions.  Scientific  splints  and 
cushions  supplement  its  lifeless  levers, 
and  pre-digested  food  enables  it  to  get 
along  without  organs  of  digestion.  It 
grows  up  amid  these  artificial  surround- 
ings, and  continues  its  hot-house  exist- 
ence to  manhood  or  womanhood.  It 
propagates,  and  posterity  reaps  the 
harvest  in  a  bounty  of  afflicted  off- 
spring. Infantile  hygiene,  protective 
sanitation,  scientific  surgery,  charity, 
peace,  and  socialism — these  agencies, 
by  suspending  selections,  have  brought 
civilized  society  to  a  physical  condition 
in  which  it  is  exceptional  to  find  a 
human  being  without  an  ailment  or 
inability  of  some  sort. 

This  is  the  crisis.  The  agencies  of 
unconscious  evolution  have  been  dis- 
qualified, but  not  superseded.  The 


232       BETTER-WORLD   PHILOSOPHT 

selective  activities  of  the  animate  and 
inanimate  elements  of  environment 
have  been  neutralized,  and  the  civilized 
world  stands  face  to  face  with  moral 
and  physical  degeneracy.  It  is  more 
than  a  problem.  It  is  a  gulf.  It  is  a 
situation  calculated  to  produce  thought. 
The  human  mind  is  disposed  to  glitter 
in  emergency.  The  most  valuable  illu- 
minations come  out  of  darkness.  A 
new  and  very  additional  function  must 
be  acquired  by  society.  Society  can 
not  grow  less  humane  nor  less  organic. 
It  must  become  more  conscious.  It  must 
continue  to  succor  and  protect  its  un- 
fortunate, hence  it  must  become  more 
ingenious.  Society  must  continue  more 
and  more  to  neutralize  the  selective 
activities  of  the  animate  and  inanimate 
elements  of  environment;  hence  it  must 
devise  its  own  discriminations.  Evolu- 
tion is  not  possible  without  selection, 
and  if  the  selective  tendencies  of  the 
animate  and  inanimate  are  stayed,  they 
must  be  compensated  for  by  an  equiva- 


RACE   CULTURE  233 

lent  increase  in  the  selective  activity 
of  society. 

The  whole  substance  of  discrimina- 
tion consists  in  the  failure  of  individu- 
als to  continue  themselves,  whether 
that  discontinuance  is  accomplished  by 
violence  or  by  voluntary  or  imposed 
neglect.  Extermination  by  metaphor, 
that  is,  by  voluntary  neglect  to  repro- 
duce, is  as  valuable  as  a  contribution 
to  progress  as  extermination  by  mas- 
sacre. And  the  new  social  function  is 
the  displacement  of  the  rude  and  ruth- 
less discriminations  of  the  animate  and 
inanimate  environments  by  a  conscious 
and  painless  social  self-discrimination. 
Evolution  must  be  beautified  and 
rationalized.  It  has  been  too  long  a 
thing  of  blood  and  tergiversation.  The 
universe  is  to  be  regenerated  by  a 
rational  and  conscious  discrimination 
in  favor  of  the  fitter  elements  of  soci- 
ety in  the  performance  of  the  repro- 
ductive function.  The  defective  mem- 
bers of  society,  whether  their  defects 


234      BETTER-WORLD  PHILOSOPHT 

be  physiological,  intellectual,  or  dispo- 
sitional,  should  not  be  permitted  to 
continue  themselves  into  coming  gen- 
erations. I  insist  that  this,  the  self- 
selective,  is  the  most  graceful,  the 
most  economical,  and  the  only  rational 
mode  of  regenerating  the  generative 
stream — those  philosophic  grandmam- 
mas, who  fancy  that  no  evolution  is 
possible  save  by  massacre,  to  the  con- 
trary notwithstanding. 

The  social  organism  should  be 
sufficiently  conscious  by  this  time  to 
realize  that  outright  idiots  are  not  the 
only  persons  who  should,  out  of  con- 
sideration for  the  future,  suicide  their 
generative  line.  There  should  be 
systematic  accentuation  of  the  -good, 
the  beautiful,  and  the  true  by  system- 
atic discrimination  in  favor  of  the 
reproduction  of  morally,  physically,  and 
intellectually  adequate  members  of 
society.  We  have  groped  too  long. 
We  have  too  long  supposed,  without 
thinking,  that  savages  are  a  necessary 


RACE   CULTURE  235 

social  evil.  We  know  better  now. 
We  know  where  we  came  from,  and 
how  we  arrived  here,  and  all  about  it. 
We  can  rear  instincts.  We  can  culti- 
vate beings  to  order.  We  can  not  re- 
enter  the  womb  and  re-create  ourselves, 
but  we  can  determine,  by  counseling 
among  ourselves,  just  about  what  style 
of  bipeds  posterity  may  be.  We  know 
the  character  of  the  generation  which 
succeeds  this  one  will  depend  on  the 
character  of  those  who  take  part  in 
its  production,  and  that  savages  exist 
among  civilized  societies  simply  be- 
cause societies  are  too  dull-minded  to 
discontinue  them.  We  know  that  it  is 
just  as  possible  to  develop  a  certain 
fancy  of  the  hominine  species  as  of  the 
equine  or  bovine  species.  By  selection 
— by  selection,  too,  without  eyes — we 
have  developed  fair  women  and  brave 
men.  We  can  by  analogous  and  more 
expeditious  selection  develop  good 
men  and  profound  women.  Men  can 
develop  brains  in  the  spinal  marrow, 


236      BETTER-WORLD  PHILOSOPHY 

learn  to  love  work  and  death,  and 
grow  noses  the  size  of  water-pitchers. 
Society  can  eliminate  its  irresponsibles, 
if  it  will  only  comprehend  really  the 
methods  of  evolution. 

If  a  certain  savage  in  1720  had  been 
prevented  from  propagating  himself, 
the  notorious  "Juke"  family  of  crimi- 
nals, which  has  cost  the  state  of  New 
York  more  than  ten  millions  of  dollars 
and  incalculable  contamination,  would 
never  have  existed.  And  if  the  sav- 
ages and  imbeciles  and  semi-savages 
and  semi-imbeciles  among  genteel  so- 
cieties to-day  were  unrepresented  in 
the  generations  to  come  for  a  few  gen- 
erations, our  penal  and  eleemosynary 
institutions  might  be  converted  into 
concert-halls.  It  indicates  a  helpless- 
ness that  is  truly  pitiable  for  a  social 
organism  to  go  on  generation  after 
generation  carrying  in  its  blood  the 
venom  of  savage  ages,  when  a  few  gen- 
erations of  rational  procedure  would 
free  it.  Any  society,  by  judicious  se- 


RACE   CULTURE  237 

lection,  might  in  a  hundred  years  have 
average  citizens  as  good  as  its  best  at 
present.  In  the  name  of  common  sense, 
why  should  not  one  whose  blood  is  can- 
cerous or  criminal  neglect,  or  be  com- 
pelled to  neglect,  to  inject  his  virus 
into  the  veins  of  posterity?  Why  should 
drunkards  and  kleptomaniacs  be  al- 
lowed to  insure  drunkards  and  klep- 
tomaniacs among  our  children  and 
children's  children?  Why  shoitld  the 
fool  propagate,  when  it  is  reasonably 
certain  that  his  offspring  will  be  idiotic? 
Why  should  I,  a  hypochondriac,  unless 
it  were  to  counteract  something  worse, 
curse  the  generations  with  my  wretch- 
edness? By  what  legerdemain  of  logic 
is  any  one  justified  in  joining  in  an  act 
whose  inutility  even  fools  discern? 
Have  we  no  obligations  to  the  future? 
Has  utility  in  time  no  value  when  util- 
ity in  space  is  so  precious?  We  de- 
velop almost  every  imaginable  manner 
of  dogs,  flowers,  horses,  plants,  and 
pigeons.  Is  it  not  as  worth  the  while 


238      BETTER-WORLD  PHILOSOPHT 

to  rear  high-minded,  strong-bodied 
boys  and  girls  as  fantastic  fowls  and 
exaggerated  vegetables?  It  requires 
no  greater  expenditure  of  genius.  Mal- 
fectives  should  be  treated  with  consid- 
eration and  patience.  They  are  the 
sad  survivals  of  a  surpassed  evolution 
or  the  careless  flotsam  of  a  capricious 
heredity.  But  society  has  as  unques- 
tionable a  right  and  as  unflinching  an 
obligation  to  protect  posterity  against 
their  offspring  as  it  has  to  protect  itself 
against  themselves. 

Parenthood  is  the  gravest  of  all  re- 
sponsibilities. The  act  of  generation 
is  a  momentous  act.  It  should  be  illu- 
minated. It  should  be  more  serious,  and 
deliberate,  and  conscious.  It  should 
be  far  more  frequently  neglected.  Hu- 
man beings  should  know  that  it  is  a 
grave  conspiracy,  the  conspiracy  to 
bring  into  the  universe  a  living  being, 
an  organism  with  lungs  and  responsi- 
bilities and  the  faculty  for  being  af- 
fected. Would-be  parents  should  ascer- 


RACE    CULTURE  239 

tain  whether  or  not  they  are  undertaking 
the  dissemination  of  disease  and  crime 
among  future  generations.  For  society 
not  to  know,  nor  care  to  know,  and  not 
to  determine,  nor  care  to  determine, 
the  character  of  purposed  contributions 
to  a  new  generation,  would  seem  amaz- 
ing, were  we  not  born  looking  upon  it. 
Were  we  accustomed  to  accomplished 
and  scientific  procreation,  our  indis- 
criminate somnambulism  would  scarce 
wear  the  aspects  of  sanity. 

In  all  the  ordinary  functions  of  life, 
human  beings  are  required  to  furnish 
evidence  of  their  fitness  for  purposed 
functions.  Why  not  in  a  function  of 
such  singular  importance  as  the  pro- 
creative?  If  manufacturers  wanting 
machinists  should  engage  whosoever 
applied,  demanding  no  evidence  of  fit- 
ness; if  teachers  and  governesses  were 
employed  without  thought  of  capacity 
or  worth;  and  if  officials  of  state  had 
(and  they  frequently  have)  nothing  to 
recommend  them  except  gender — there 


240      BETTER-WORLD  PHILOSOPHY 

would  be  manifested  the  same  lack  of 
sagacity  as  that  manifested  by  states- 
men and  sociologists,  who  permit  to 
participate  in  the  propagation  of  a  new 
generation  any  twain  with  the  disposi- 
tion of  mind.  If  it  is  of  sufficient 
utility  to  require  a  certificate  of  moral 
and  intellectual  fitness  of  one  who  pur- 
poses to  educate  the  growing  genera- 
tion, is  it  not  of  sufficient  utility  to 
demand  a  much  more  significant  assur- 
ance from  one  who  purposes  to  engage 
in  the  far  more  momentous  undertaking 
of  creating  a  new  being?  We  punish 
a  man  for  neglecting  to  send  his  child 
to  school,  but  place  no  check  on  the 
begetting  of  monstrous  offspring. 

Consciousness  of  time  relations  suc- 
ceeds in  development  consciousness  of 
space  relations.  Men  talk  of  brother- 
hood and  fraternity  and  the  infirmity 
of  patriotism  and  the  parliament  of 
man,  and  even  of  non-human  consider- 
ation, before  consciousness  seriously 
invades  the  dimension  of  time.  It  was 


RACE   CULTURE  241 

only  the  other  day  that  human  con- 
sciousness came  into  possession  of  the 
conception  that  the  universe  is  not  an 
immense  petrifaction  which  has  existed 
and  which  will  continue  to  exist  in 
pretty  much  the  same  condition  from 
eternity  to  eternity.  We  now  no 
longer  look  upon  the  universe  as  fixed. 
It  is  a  process,  a  changeling,  an  evolv- 
ing caprice,  and  in  mundane  neighbor- 
hoods, at  least,  is  advancing  pretty 
uniformly  from  the  homogeneous  to 
the  heterogeneous.  Current  events 
are  links  in  endless  concatenations. 
The  present  is  the  product  of  the  past, 
and  the  future  will  be  the  more  ac- 
complished product  of  the  present.  We 
are,  when  we  come  into  the  world,  what 
our  ancestors  have  made  us  ;  and  on 
what  we  are  depends  what  posterity 
shall  be.  This  development  of  lon- 
gitudinal, or  serial,  consciousness  is 
the  development  of  the  sort  of  con- 
sciousness that  will  stimulate  human 
stirpiculture.  Human  beings  will  forego 


242      BETTER-WORLD   PHILOSOPHT 

the  apparent  naturalness  of  contrib- 
uting to  the  future  generations  when 
they  become  really  conscious  that  it 
is  philanthropy  to  do  so.  The  more 
highly  evolved  elements  of  society  will 
be  irritated,  too,  to  a  livelier  discrim- 
ination against  the  vicious,  who  natu- 
rally will  be  the  most  tardily  impressed 
with  the  duty  of  longitudinal  philan- 
thropy. 

Social  self-culture  will  come,  as  does 
every  transition,  imperceptibly.  It 
will  proceed  from  the  more  manifest 
to  the  less,  and  from  the  less  manifest 
to  the  least.  From  the  clumsiest  kind 
of  a  perception  that  idiots  and  felons 
and  incurables  should  perhaps  be  for- 
bidden to  take  part  in  the  production 
of  a  new  generation,  the  social  con- 
sciousness will  develop  finally  into  the 
most  consummate  and  caustic  system 
of  discriminations.  The  sun  will  yet 
pour  his  Jire  upon  an  age,  fanciful  as  it 
may  seem,  when  it  will  be  a  crime  for 
malfectives  to  beget. 


INDIVIDUAL  CULTURE 

What  I  have  just  striven  to  illumine 
is  the  generative  stream.  I  have  de- 
scribed in  what  manner  this  stream  may 
be  endowed  so  as  to  bring  forth  beings 
of  an  approximately  ideal  quality.  But 
there  is  atavism  and  heredity  and  the 
inertia  of  human  mind,  and  these  for- 
midable facts  will  delay  many  ages 
this  brilliant  possibility.  In  the  mean 
time,  what?  What  about  to-day  and 
next  year  and  the  next  generation? 
Is  an  apocalyptic  possibility  the  whole 
of  hope?  Deformities  are  pouring 
upon  existence  with  the  inexhaustible 
thaw  of  the  infinite.  What  can  be 
done  to  these?  What  hope  more 
tangible  exists  for  one  born  deformed 
than  the  dream  that  a  distant  posterity 
may  escape  his  evils?  Are  there  post- 
243 


244      BETTER-WORLD  PHILOSOPIIT 

natal  possibilities  of  amendment,  and 
if  so,  what?  What  about  ourselves, 
who  are  already  here  with  dispositions 
fresh  from  the  forest  heart?  We  can 
not  re-invade  the  womb  and  come  forth 
again.  And  if  we  did,  it  would  lend  no 
luster  to  our  inheritance.  The  genius 
for  bringing  beings  into  the  world  of  a 
specified  excellence  is  valueless  for  de- 
formities who  are  already  here. 

"Educate?"  Not  unless  there  is 
etymological  reform.  To  educate  is  to 
lead  out,  to  amplify,  to  differentiate. 
Education  is  the  evolutional  augmen- 
tation of  that  which  is.  To  educate  a 
deformity  is  to  confer  teeth  upon  a 
monster.  Would  you  endow  the  pre- 
cipice and  teach  profundity  to  the 
gulf?  Would  you  thaw  the  avalanche? 
Bottled  diabolism  is  less  harmful 
corked.  Clumsiness,  when  a  bandit 
wears  it,  is  a  praise.  Only  beauty 
deserves  to  bloom.  Education,  ety- 
mologically  and  practically,  means  the 
development  or  effectualization  of  that 


INDIVIDUAL    CULTURE  245 

which  is,  and  to  educate  deformity  is 
to  strengthen  the  genius  of  universal 
evil.  Beings  who  come  into  the  world 
as  we  have  come  into  the  world,  and 
as  millions  after  us  will  come  into  the 
world,  mal-tempered  and  awry,  need 
more  than  a  somewhat  assiduous  effect- 
ualizatton.  They  need  revision.  They 
need  effectualization,  but  more  than 
effectualization  they  need  surgery. 
The  supposition  that  the  young,  who 
are  invariably  born  with  an  inherent 
tendency  to  mal-behave,  need  primarily 
space  and  provocation  to  expand,  is 
the  fundamental  blunder  in  individual 
culture.  Did  we  breathe  in  that  age 
of  which  we  dream,  when  infants  shall 
enter  the  universe  spontaneously  right- 
eous and  requiring  only  sunshine  in 
order  to  grow  grand,  we  might  appro- 
priately educate.  But  we  do  not.  We 
are  the  not  very  remote  posterity  of 
brutes,  the  untamed  and  unrectified 
progeny  of  eternal  ages  of  militancy 
and  hate,  savages  flung  a  little  higher 


246      BETTER-WORLD  PHILOSOPHY 

by  the  evolutional  surges  than  our 
ancestors,  but  compounded  of  their 
substance.  Our  forefathers  were  Trog- 
lodytes, and  wove  their  lairs  from 
jungle  twigs.  The  blood  of  cannibals 
bowls  along  our  veins.  Civilization, 
contrary  to  delusion,  is  not  civilized, 
but  tremendous.  The  fundamental 
function  of  individual  culture,  there- 
fore, or  one  of  the  two  or  three  funda- 
mental functions,  should  be  ^-construc- 
tion—the elimination  as  much  as  may 
be  of  a  dark  and  egoistic  heredity. 

Individual  culture,  as  it  exists  to-day, 
is  a  gigantic  farce.  It  is  clumsy  in  its 
pedagogy,  in  the  first  place.  Instead 
of  making  the  process  of  culture  life 
itself,  it  is  an  artificial  and  vexatious 
preliminary  of  life.  So  much  is  incul- 
cated that  is  obsolete,  and  that  which 
is  inculcated  is  inculcated  so  little  by 
experience  and  so  largely  by  arbitrary 
injection,  that  the  whole  process,  from 
the  standpoint  of  the  taught,  resembles 
martyrdom,  and  the  lives  of  teachers 


INDIVIDUAL    CULTURE  247 

are  ruined  in  compelling  mutinous 
young  to  submit  to  it.  In  the  second 
place,  culture  is  unsuccessful  utterly  in 
the  attainment  of  essential  ends.  In- 
stead of  making  human  beings  consum- 
mate, it  is  satisfied  with  their  cephali- 
zation.  It  does  not  make  men  and 
women  unselfish  and  graceful.  It  makes 
them  strategical.  It  does  not  implant 
love.  It  does  not  produce  characters 
indisposed  to  cheat  and  falsify  and 
despise  and  slay.  It  does  not  render 
its  patrons  peaceful  and  philanthropic. 
It  cultivates  finesse,  but  it  does  not  re- 
move the  intrigue  and  acrimony  and 
evil  and  barbarism  from  the  world. 
It  should  do  these  things.  The  two- 
fold function  of  individual  culture  is  so 
to  develop  beings  that  they  shall  be  able  to 
perceive  their  proper  relations  to  the  rest 
of  the  universe,  to  the  inanimate  about 
them,  and  to  other  beings  in  space  and 
time,  and  realizing  their  relations  to 
others,  to  be  disposed  to  assume  them. 
The  former  of  these  two  functions,  the 


248      BETTER-WORLD  PHILOSOPHT 

irritation  and  development  of  the  intel- 
lect, culture,  honestly  tho  awkwardly, 
attempts  to  perform;  but  the  disposi- 
tion to  sustain  graceful  relations  to 
others,  the  neglect  of  the  inculcation 
of  which  causes  most  of  the  misery 
among  men,  is  almost  wholly  unat- 
tended to. 

Individual  culture  is  a  failure,  be- 
cause its  assumptions  are  false  and  its 
procedures  the  reverse  of  what  they 
should  be.  It  is  assumed  by  the  culti- 
vators that  babes  are  practically  im- 
maculate. Helplessness  is  mistaken 
for  innocence.  Character  culture  is 
considered  inconsequential,  and  the  in- 
jection of  facts  colossal  in  importance. 
The  exceptions  usurp  the  cultural  des- 
tination of  the  mass.  Instead  of 
^-forming  the  exceptions  and  educat- 
ing the  mass  of  the  young,  the  excep- 
tions should  be  educated  and  the  mass 
enter  reformatories.  Only  exceptions 
are  fit  for  education,  for  only  excep- 
tions are  not  malformed.  Infants  are 


INDIVIDUAL    CULTURE  249 

ignorant.  There  is  practically  no 
doubt  about  that;  but  ignorance  is  not 
their  only  nor  their  most  menacing 
negation.  They  need  data  and  develop- 
ment, but  more  than  data  and  develop- 
ment they  need  re-formation.  Children 
are  innate  egoists  and  savages.  I  do 
not  mean  that  they  are  fierce.  They 
are  too  helpless  for  ferocity.  But  I  do 
mean  that  beings,  with  well-nigh  no 
exceptions,  are  excessively  fond  of 
themselves,  and  are  more  or  less  seri- 
ously indifferent  toward  others.  I  do 
mean  that  the  inhumanity,  formal  and 
informal,  governmental  and  social, 
manifesting  itself  everywhere  among 
all  the  orders  of  men,  is  not  the  result 
altogether  nor  primarily  of  the  tradi- 
tional and  institutional  framework  in 
which  these  beings  exist.  It  is  innate, 
and  is  simply  an  aspect  of  that  univer- 
sal egoism  with  which  the  processes  of 
evolution  have  contaminated  the  planet. 
And  instead  of  recognizing  these  in- 
herent tendencies,  and  combating  them 


250      BETTER-WORLD   PHILOSOPHT 

from  the  birth  hour,  they  are  assumed 
by  culturists  not  to  exist.  The  human 
child  is  supposed  to  be  a  sort  of  un- 
stained page,  an  embryonic  angel  not 
yet  contaminated  by  his  environment; 
and  this  is  a  remnant  of  the  pre-Dar- 
winian  delusion  that  human  beings 
were  originally,  and  are  still  intrin- 
sically, almost  gods. 

Children  are  nearly  all  of  them  ego- 
ists. They  should  be  assumed  to  be 
so.  They  derive  their  natures  by  a 
process  of  very  inadequate  filtration 
from  a  dark  and  terrible  past.  They 
have  within  them  the  dawn-peeps  of 
holier  possibilities,  but  they  have  also 
the  uneliminated  alloy  of  that  out  of 
which  they  have  travailed.  Simply  to 
unfold  them  transcends  stupidity  and 
approximates  the  monstrous.  They 
can  not  become  ideal  men  and  women, 
nor  anything  like  ideal  men  and 
women,  unless  they  are  systematically 
and  tirelessly  revised. 

Children  should  be  analyzed  and  an 


INDIVIDUAL    CULTURE  251 

inventory  made  of  their  talents,  in- 
stincts, and  probabilities,  and  then  de- 
veloped in  the  .light  of  this  illumination. 
The  successful  teacher  is  the  accom- 
plished analyst — he  who  can  peer  into 
the  consciousnesses  of  his  pupils  and 
ascertain  what  they  are  made  of,  and 
having  ascertained  the  instincts  which 
compose  them  and  the  reactions  of 
those  instincts,  becomes,  by  reason  of 
his  strategy,  the  reigning  element  in 
their  environment.  The  ductile  days 
of  childhood  is  the  period  of  the  most 
successful  amendment.  If  beings  are 
not  converted  while  they  are  yet 
young,  they  are  reasonably  certain  to 
approximate  that  which  they  at  birth 
intended  to  become.  The  environ- 
ment of  each  should  correspond  as 
precisely  as  possible  with  the  necessi- 
ties of  each.  The  more  mal-born  the 
child,  the  more  rigid  and  relentless 
should  be  the  influences  for  its  regen- 
eration. The  same  patience  and  solici- 
tude now  given  to  the  creation  and 


252      BETTER-WORLD  PHILOSOPHY 

endowment  of  capacity  should  be  de- 
voted to  the  remodelment  of  character. 
It  is  not  brilliant  to  expect  that  ignoble 
children,  without  sciences  and  institu- 
tions devoted  to  their  sublimation,  will 
bloom  into  radiant  characters.  Men 
and  women  are  but  babes  grown 
stately;  how  stately,  however,  depends 
on  the  profile  of  their  sky. 

An  individual  living  being  in  his  in- 
dividual development  is  an  analogue  of 
the  race.  The  individual  career  of  a 
human  from  the  unicellular  embryo  to 
maturity  is  an  epitome  of  the  morpho- 
logical pilgrimage  from  amceba  to 
mammal.  This  is  true  of  both  physical 
and  psychical  development.  Physically, 
both  individual  and  race  commence  as 
homogeneous,  unicellular  organisms, 
and  advance  toward  more  and  more 
highly  heterogeneous  multicellulars. 
Mind,  also,  in  both  racial  and  indi- 
vidual evolution,  proceeds  in  time  from 
the  particular  to  the  general,  from  the 
concrete  to  the  abstract,  and  from  the 


INDIVIDUAL    CULTURE  253 

inert  and  helpless  to  the  more  and 
more  determinative.  An  individual  is 
an  aggregate  of  tendencies  among 
which  there  are  struggle  and  survival 
as  veritably  as  among  the  individuals 
of  a  society.  The  fittest  survive.  The 
conduct  of  an  individual  is  the  resultant 
of  his  conscious  tendencies  to  move, 
just  as  the  conduct  of  a  society  is  the 
composite  of  its  individual  constitu- 
ents. 

The  gigantic  task  in  individual  char- 
acter culture,  as  in  social,  is  the  devel- 
opment of  altruistic  tendencies.  The 
ideal  nature  is  one  of  balanced  egoism 
and  altruism — a  nature  responding  with 
identical  alacrity  for  self  and  for  others. 
The  generative  stream  produces  beings 
who  act  with  immense  favor  to  them- 
selves. The  task  of  human  stirpicul- 
ture  is  so  to  amend  the  generative 
stream  that  beings  will  begin  to  exist 
with  the  ideal  balance  of  the  tenden- 
cies, and  individual,  or  post-natal, 
culture  discerns  its  task  in  the  estab- 


254      BETTER-WORLD  PHILOSOPHT 

lishment  of  this  equilibrium  during  in- 
dividual duration.  This  displacement 
of  egoism,  or  inculcation  of  altruism, 
in  an  individual  is  effected  in  a  manner 
identical  with  that  by  which  egoism  is 
displaced  in  a  society,  that  is,  by  selec- 
tion— selection  among  the  instincts,  or 
impulses,  or  conscious  tendencies  to 
move,  of  which  an  individual  is  psychi- 
cally composed.  Environment,  too,  is 
that  which  determines  the  character  of 
the  discriminations.  Environment  fur- 
nishes the  stimuli,  the  tantalization, 
and  by  deciding  the  style  of  the  tan- 
talization determines  the  manner  in 
which  instincts  shall  exercise  and  de- 
velop themselves.  Instincts  develop 
and  decay  with  use  and  disuse.  It  is  a 
psychological  law.  The  oftener  a  train 
of  states  passes  thru  consciousness  the 
more  fixed  and  habitual  it  becomes, 
and  the  greater  the  likelihood  of  its 
recurrence.  Every  time  a  tendency  is 
exercised  it  is  invigorated,  and  every 
time  it  is  neglected  or  subordinated  it 


INDIVIDUAL    CULTURE  255 

is  weakened.  Any  tendency  may  be 
stimulated  or  destroyed  by  a  series  of 
successes  or  a  succession  of  submissions. 
A  living  being  comes  into  existence; 
he  is  endowed  with  a  certain  nature,  a 
certain  set  of  potentialities,  with  a  cer- 
tain relation  of  understanding  among 
them.  What  he  may  be  by  nature  fif- 
teen or  fifty  years  later  different  from 
what  he  is  at  birth  depends  on  the  en- 
vironment in  which  he  passes  these 
years.  Everything  that  grows,  whether 
it  be  a  tree,  a  personality,  a  grass  blade, 
or  a  race,  starts  with  a  certain  heredi- 
tary trend,  a  certain  cut  of  tendency  or 
intention,  and  what  it  becomes  depends 
on  the  shape  of  the  particular  niche  of 
the  universe  in  which  fate  flings  it. 

This  is  a  stupendous  fact,  and  one 
uncontemplated  by  the  cultivators  of 
the  young.  Culturists  are  about  as 
conscious  of  the  vital  role  of  environ- 
ment in  the  production  of  individual 
character  as  they  are  of  the  prepon- 
derance of  egoism  in  human  heredity. 


256      BETTER-WORLD   PHILOSOPHT 

Human  beings  come  into  existence. 
They  come  into  it  each  with  immense 
consideration  for  himself.  They  pass 
their  lives  in  an  environment  calculated 
to  inflame  the  very  tendency  which 
more  than  all  others  needs  restraint. 
From  the  time  an  individual  human 
comes  into  the  world  a  sprawling,  squall- 
ing, unpeepered  vagrant,  to  the  hour 
he  goes  out  in  tragedy  and  pain,  life  is 
one  continuation  of  the  very  condi- 
tions which  brought  him  into  the  world 
a  confirmed  egoist.  The  very  first  im- 
pressions that  invade  the  consciousness 
of  a  human  infant  are  such  as  to  im- 
part a  very  ludicrously  untrue  concep- 
tion of  his  relations  to  others.  An 
infant  is  pampered  and  distinguished 
and  spoiled  and  exaggerated  as  if  he 
were  of  a  specially  engendered  order 
of  beings.  He  must  frequently  be  dis- 
tended with  the  vanity  that  he  is  the 
most  extraordinary  personage  that  has 
for  a  long  time  appeared  among  the 
populations,  and  that  there  is  a  highly 


INDIVIDUAL    CULTURE  257 

interesting  disparity  between  himself 
and  others.  The  "spoiling"  which  an 
individual  human  being  usually  under- 
goes during  the  first  two  or  three  years 
of  his  conscious  existence  can  not  help 
having,  since  these  initial  experiences 
frame  the  foundations  of  consciousness, 
a  considerable  influence  in  all  instances, 
and  in  some  a  very  noticeable  influence, 
on  the  character  of  the  superstructure. 
From  three  to  thirteen  years  of  age,  a 
child  passes  his  time  for  the  most  part 
in  the  association  of  other  savages  like 
himself.  The  profession  of  children  is 
play,  and  the  primary  purpose  of  most 
play  is  struggle.  Children  are  domi- 
nated by  this  instinct  to  struggle  and 
be  superior,  and  whenever  two  or  more 
of  them  are  gathered  together,  they 
occupy  themselves  in  its  exercise.  Par- 
ents and  teachers  unwittingly  devise, 
and  teach  to  them,  varieties  of  means 
by  which  they  may  effectively  satisfy 
this  instinct.  Competitions  of  every 
imaginable  kind,  appealing  to  strength, 


258       BETTER-WORLD  PHILOSOPHY 

skill,  speed,  or  sagacity,  and  all  of  them 
having  primarily  the  purpose  to  pro- 
vide entertainment  for  their  egoistic 
instincts,  are  systematically  held  out 
for  childish  indulgence.  Even  in  the 
school-room,  where  above  every  place 
else  culture  ought  to  be  rational,  the 
same  crimes  and  degradations  are  per- 
petrated. Persistent  intellectual  appli- 
cation is  unnatural  and  repulsive  to 
the  young,  and  they  are  goaded  to  arti- 
ficial industry  by  appeals  to  this  pow- 
erful propensity.  Rewards,  prizes, 
contests,  merit  marks — every  conceiv- 
able device  by  which  this  instinct  may 
be  harnessed  to  the  service  of  intel- 
lectual excellence  is  used. 

These  competitive  indulgences,  in 
one  form  or  another  constantly  before 
the  mind  of  childhood,  and  forming 
the  most  vivid  and  influential  experi- 
ences during  the  dozen  most  impres- 
sional  years,  have,  without  any  doubt 
whatever,  a  powerful  tendency  to 
develop  the  inherent  egoistic  tendency 


INDIVIDUAL    CULTURE  259 

of  the  child  soul,  for  the  essence  of  all 
competition  is  egoism.  A  game  is  a 
battle,  not  a  battle  in  which  the  com- 
batants would  do  each  other  violence, 
but  one  in  which  they  seek,  and  seek 
vehemently,  for  each  other's  discomfi- 
ture. It  is  war  by  means  of  assump- 
tions. Each  competitor  assumes  his 
antagonist  to  be  his  enemy.  He  de- 
sires to  achieve  a  certain  end,  and  his 
opponent  desires  to  prevent  its  achieve- 
ment. They  struggle.  They  set  them- 
selves against  each  other.  It  is  all 
feigned  and  mimic,  but  the  conscious 
states  are  intense.  It  is  war,  so  far  as 
the  consciousness  is  concerned.  It  is 
certainly  the  opposite  of  altruism. 
The  attitude  of  a  consciousness  indul- 
ging in  contest  is  one  of  pure  or  relative 
selfishness,  either  one  in  which  an  indi- 
vidual alone  yearns  for  his  own  success 
and  the  discomfiture  of  others,  or  for 
his  success  as  associated  with  that  of 
others  against  still  others.  And  it  is 
impossible  for  a  consciousness  to  as- 


260      BETTER-WORLD  PHILOSOPHY 

sume  an  attitude,  especially  one  of 
such  intensity,  without  engendering  a 
tendency  to  perpetuate  in  conscious- 
ness that  tendency.  I  do  not  mean 
that  a  game  of  marbles  or  hand-ball 
or  whist  will  cause  an  individual  to  be- 
come appreciably  more  egoistic.  But 
I  do  mean  to  assert  that  the  fact  that 
human  beings,  infant  and  adult,  choose 
to  expend,  without  utility,  vast  ener- 
gies in  a  competitive  manner  is  prima 
facie  evidence  of  the  existence  of  this 
instinct,  and  that  competitions  inces- 
santly indulged  in  thru  a  period  of 
years,  especially  by  young  and  mallea- 
ble minds,  can  not  help  stimulating  the 
instinct  they  exercise.  Any  instinct, 
whether  it  be  the  mania  for  the  accu- 
mulation of  superfluous  wealth,  the 
appetite  for  fame,  or  what  not,  will 
grow  if  it  is  exercised,  the  amount  of 
the  growth  depending  on  the  pitch  and 
duration  of  the  exercise. 

Is  it  any  wonder,  therefore,  that  the 


INDIVIDUAL    CULTURE  261 

young,  accustomed  to  such  an  environ- 
ment, grow  up  to  consider  life  itself  a 
game,  in  which  they  are  to  strive  to 
outwit  those  about  them?  Is  it  any 
wonder  that  you  and  I  and  men  and 
women  everywhere  are  helplessly  self- 
ish, when  we  were  born  so,  when  all 
that  we  know  of  altruism  has  come 
thru  Sunday-school  rumors  and  strag- 
gling precepts,  and  when  we  have  all 
our  lives  been  surrounded  by  selfish 
people  and  occupied  in  selfish  pastimes 
and  professions?  Nothing  could  be 
more  natural.  Altruism  is  anomalous 
on  the  earth,  and  it  is  not  astonishing. 
Living  beings  who  love  themselves  no 
more  ardently  than  they  love  others 
are  prodigies,  and  it  will  never  be 
otherwise  so  long  as  beings  are  born 
as  they  are  and  live  in  like  conditions. 
Reformers  would  as  well  attempt  to 
keep  down  conflagration  with  every 
citizen  an  incendiary  as  to  banish  self- 
ishness from  a  world  into  which  be- 


262      BETTER-WORLD  PHILOSOPHY 

ings  are  born  selfish,  and  in  which 
selfishness  is  promoted  or  tolerated 
from  cradle  to  tomb. 

There  must  be  radical  revolution  in 
procedure.  Egoism  must  be  recog- 
nized, and  recognized  as  the  most  for- 
midable fact  in  human  nature.  It 
must  be  discouraged  at  all  hazards, 
even,  if  necessary,  at  the  expense  of 
intelligence.  It  must  be  combated 
from  the  moment  a  child  is  capable  of 
impressions.  The  young  should  be 
drilled  and  disciplined  in  social  ele- 
gance, and  with  the  same  valiancy  and 
science  as  are  employed  in  the  develop- 
ment of  the  intellect.  Altruism  should 
be  inculcated  from  the  cradle,  and 
savagery  should  be  denounced.  Max- 
ims and  precepts,  proclaiming  the 
equal  preciousness  of  all,  should  be 
assiduously  dinned  into  the  conscious- 
ness. The  young  should  be  convinced 
beyond  all  chance  of  deterioration  that 
the  only  laudable  thing  in  the  world  is 
the  causing  of  happiness,  and  that  hap- 


v 


INDIVIDUAL    CULTURE  263 

piness  in  others  is  just  as  precious  and 
aluable  as  it  is  in  themselves.  They 
should  be  taught  that  only  "  happiness 
which  comes  like  the  red  flowers  of  the 
oleander  out  of  the  bosom  of  the  all" 
is  true  happiness,  not  that  which  is 
gleaned  from  the  pain  and  discomfiture 
of  others.  Every  child,  and  not  only 
every  child  but  every  intelligence, 
should  avoid  the  sin  of  struggle — 
I  mean,  of  struggle  against  others. 
The  only  legitimate  adversary  is  the 
inanimate — never  a  living  soul.  Instead 
of  struggle  against  others,  children 
should  be  taught  helpfulness,  struggle 
for  others,  sympathy  instead  of  subju- 
gation. It  is  an  injury  for  a  child  ever 
under  any  circumstances  to  participate 
in  any  game,  or  contest.  It  fires  the 
very  instinct  it  is  the  duty  of  culture 
to  curb.  Childhood  pastimes  should 
be  scrupulously  those  which  afford 
divertisement  without  degradation — 
dancing,  dumb-bells,  see-saw,  sailing, 
stilts,  kites,  tree-planting,  strolling,  ex- 


264      BETTER-WORLD  PHILOSOPHT 

ploring,  sleighing,  swimming,  swing- 
ing, outing,  and  the  like.  Or,  better 
than  pastimes  which  do  not  stimulate 
egoism,  are  those  which  actuate  altru- 
ism. The  cooperative  construction  of 
a  mimic  dam  or  domicile  is  better  than 
bicycling,  in  so  far  as  character  culture 
is  concerned,  because  in  the  one  there 
is  actual  cultivation  of  helpfulness, 
while  the  other  contains  only  the  nega- 
tive virtue  of  neglecting  the  cultivation 
of  egoism.  All  school-room  competi- 
tion should  be  abolished.  The  school 
should  be  a  family,  a  fraternity,  a  col- 
ony of  cooperating,  helping,  sympa- 
thizing brothers  and  sisters,  not  a  camp 
of  hot  combatants  bent  on  mutual  dis- 
comfiture. Competition  is  not  neces- 
sary, and  if  it  were  necessary,  it  would 
not  be  justifiable.  If  it  is  not  possible 
to  produce  great  intellects  without 
crimes  on  character,  then  let  us  doze 
forever  in  the  holy  haze  of  mediocrity. 
A  graceful  nature  is  the  most  essential 
psychic  possession  of  a  living  being. 


INDIVIDUAL   CULTURE  265 

The  ability  to  weigh  the  stars  and  dis- 
sect the  sunbeams  is  more  marvelous 
but  not  more  valuable  than  the  dispo- 
sition to  be  true,  generous,  and  just. 
Over-intellectualization  is  more  than 
a  possibility:  it  is  a  fact.  We  lack 
grace  of  nature  more  than  sagacity. 
Clumsiness  is  not  horrible  in  a  hyena. 
Let  the  intellect  sleep,  or  civilize  it. 
I  am  not  decrying  culture,  but  culture 
as  it  is,  lop-sided  culture,  the  cultiva- 
tion of  the  strategies  to  the  neglect, 
and  especially  at  tJie  expense,  of  the 
humanities. 

In  reply  to  those  who  maintain  that 
to  utilize  the  struggle  and  survival  in- 
stinct is  unavoidable  in  achieving  a 
task  so  onerous  as  intellectual  excel- 
lence, I  would  say:  //  is  not.  The  in- 
stinct to  be  superior  is  a  prominent 
instinct  in  nearly  all  children.  But  it 
is  not  the  only  instinct.  The  desire 
for  approbation  is  almost  as  strong  and 
perhaps  quite  as  prevalent.  The  in- 
stincts of  honor,  of  self-respect,  of 


266      BETTER-WORLD  PHILOSOPHY 

curiosity,  of  fear,  of  sympathy,  etc., 
are  found  almost  everywhere,  and  may 
be  appealed  to  successfully  by  any  one 
with  tact  and  analysis  enough  to  un- 
dertake the  development  of  human 
young.  Then,  it  is  not  necessary  that 
intellectual  culture  be  such  a  forced 
and  repulsive  something  as  it  is.  The 
most  repulsive  portions  of  curricula 
are  the  obsolete  and  the  anachronistic. 
Who,  that  has  pity,  is  disposed  to  cen- 
sure a  child  for  rebelling  against  the 
useless  and  absurd  rumination,  thru 
painful  years,  of  mummified  languages 
and  fearful  mathematical  formulae, 
which  have  no  more  real  bearing,  and 
which  to  the  average  human  being 
never  will  have  any  more  real  bearing, 
on  the  great,  living,  performing  universe 
around  him  than  the  esoteric  nonsense 
of  the  Five  Kings?  The  extent  to 
which  Latin  and  Greek  are  pondered 
and  agonized  over  to-day  is  not  only 
ridiculous,  but  criminal.  A  few  months 
of  word-analysis  and  systematic  study 


INDIVIDUAL   CULTURE  267 

of  English  will  do  more  toward  im- 
parting a  mastery  of  one's  vernacular 
than  as  many  years  of  the  study  of 
dead  languages.  And  so  far  as  disci- 
pline is  concerned,  geometry  and  the 
concrete  sciences  are  far  superior  to 
any  language  in  the  development  of 
rational  mind.  Another  thing  that 
renders  intellectual  culture  unpopular 
with  the  young  is  the  illogical  manner 
in  which  tasks  are  spread  before  them, 
or  the  illogical  manner  in  which  their 
development  is  attempted.  The  ini- 
tial concern  in  intellectual  culture — 
the  very  first  thing  to  be  accomplished, 
and  that  which  should  employ  the 
early  years  of  child  life — should  be 
the  training  and  development  of  the 
senses  for  the  accurate  acquisition  of  a 
knowledge  of  the  surrounding  uni- 
verse. The  mind  is  made  up  of  that 
which  passes  in  along  its  avenues,  and 
rich  and  accurate  knowledge  is  de- 
pendent upon  accurate  and  educated 
sensations.  The  second  essential  is 


268      BETTER-WORLD  PHlLOSOPHT 

that  the  universe  be  presented  as  much 
as  possible  directly  to  the  senses.  The 
universe  presented  in  the  primary 
schools  of  the  world  to-day  is  not  the 
actual  universe:  it  is  a  caricature. 
Knowledge,  especially  primary  knowl- 
edge, should  be  experienced,  not  ac- 
quired thru  the  very  imperfect  medium 
of  language.  Experience  must  form 
the  basis  and  substance  of  all  knowl- 
edge; for  the  only  way  in  which  any 
consciousness  is  able  to  assimilate  sec- 
ondary information  is  by  means  of  the 
primary  information  derived  thru  the 
experience  of  the  senses.  The  acqui- 
sition of  a  knowledge  of  remoter  and 
more  involved  aspects  of  the  uni- 
verse, and  the  acquisition  of  the  opin- 
ions and  knowledge  of  other  beings 
(and  the  acquisition  of  the  means 
for  making  all  these  acquisitions),  are 
matters'  of  secondary  and  subsequent 
consideration.  It  is  a  crime  to  set  a 
child  the  task  of  learning  the  names 
and  uses  of  a  wilderness  of  alphabet- 


INDIVIDUAL    CULTURE  269 

ical  symbols,  or  combinations  of  sym- 
bols, at  an  age  when  it  needs  and  de- 
sires nothing  but  the  exercise  and 
development  of  its  senses.  The  arts 
of  reading  and  writing  are  difficult 
acquisitions.  They  should  be  acquired 
incidentally.  They  should  be  reserved 
for  an  age  when  they  can  be  acquired 
easily  and  without  nausea.  They  are, 
and  should  be,  acquired  as  means  tor  ad- 
ditional acquisition.  To  allow  them  to 
become  usurpers — to  become  the  ends 
of  primary  culture — is  preposterous. 
The  primary  means  of  intellectual  cul- 
ture are  the  senses,  and  the  primary  end 
is  a  knowledge  of  the  universe.  Read- 
ing and  writing  are  arts  which  supple- 
ment the  primary  means  of  knowl- 
edge. And  the  fact  that  they  are  to- 
day made  the  primary  end  of  all  early 
culture  is  largely  responsible  for  the 
supposed  necessity  for  harnessing  the 
most  dangerous  propensities  for  their 
acquisition. 

If  the  curriculum   were  freed  of  its 


270       BETTER-WORLD  PHILOSOPHT 

archaic  portions,  the  remainder  reorgan- 
ized in  the  light  of  the  latest  psychol- 
ogy, and  the  cultural  process  made  to 
enter  more  sincerely  into  the  every- 
day life  of  the  young,  instead  of  being 
a  sort  of  excrescence  or  superimposi- 
tion  which  juveniles  are  expected  to 
endure  five  twenty-fourths  of  one  half 
the  days  of  the  year,  intellectual  cul- 
ture would  be  a  less  fearful  and  for- 
bidding thing  than  it  is  at  present. 

The  revision  of  human  nature  thru 
the  rational  revision  of  juvenile  nature 
is  perhaps  the  only  solution  of  the 
ethical,  political,  and  economic  prob- 
lems of  the  mind.  These  problems 
exist  primarily,  all  of  them,  on  account 
of  the  preponderance  of  the  egoistic 
element  in  human  nature.  Do  away 
with  this  preponderance,  and  you  do 
away  with  the  social  tangles  and  con- 
tentions which  grow  out  of  it.  Men 
and  women  are  mischievous  and  coarse 
because  they  were  born  so,  and  because 
they  were  not  refined  while  they  were 


INDIVIDUAL   CULTURE  271 

growing.  Teach  a  child  to  love  others 
as  it  loves  itself ;  let  this  be  the  first 
and  most  impressive  injunction  that 
invades  its  ears ;  allow  it  never  to 
infringe  this  rule  in  its  conduct  toward 
others,  and  never  to  associate  with 
those  who  do  ;  teach  it  that  the  highest 
virtue  is  forbearance  and  helpfulness ; 
inculcate  the  equal  rights  of  all  to  the 
joys  of  the  universe  ;  forbid  all  com- 
petitive indulgence  as  degrading  and 
ungallant ;  teach  it  the  propriety  of 
exercising  its  combativeness  against 
the  tendencies  of  the  inanimate,  never 
against  a  fellow-creature  ;  allow  only 
those  amusements  which  encourage 
kindness  and  the  rivalry  of  good- 
doing; — and  when  that  child  grows  to 
manhood  or  womanhood,  and  encoun- 
ters the  conditions  of  more  serious 
life,  it  will  encounter  them,  not  ideally, 
perhaps,  but  in  a  spirit  very  remote 
from  that  in  which  it  would  have  ap- 
proached them  had  it  come  up  thru 
conditions  of  incessant  egoism. 


272      BETTER-WORLD  PHILOSOPHY 

The  environment  of  the  formative 
years  of  human  beings,  in  order  to 
justify  very  courageous  expectations, 
must  be  consistent.  An  environment 
four-fourths  maudlin  is  not  reformed 
by  becoming  one-fourth  sane.  I  mean 
that  the  intermittent  efforts  of  the 
school-room,  however  serious  and 
judicious,  can  not  produce  unaided  the 
necessary  revolution  in  human  nature. 
The  environment  of  the  school  is  a 
small  part  of  the  environment  of  a 
human  being.  A  human  being  on  an 
average  is  in  the  school  only  five 
hours  of  one  half  the  days  of  a  few 
years  of  his  life,  and  rational  treatment 
during  this  time  could  be  largely 
counteracted  by  the  immense  influences 
of  the  rest  of  his  existence.  Culture 
comprehends  more  than  school-room 
meddlement,  and  cultural  reform 
means  more  than  the  inoculation  of 
otherism  along  with  facts  during  the 
scanty  hours  of  school  life  simply. 
The  nursery,  the  street,  the  school,  the 


INDIVIDUAL   CULTURE  273 

concert-hall,  the  market,  the  universe, 
all  must  conspire  to  the  same  end. 
The  environment  oj  the  whole  life  must 
proceed  with  revolutional  intent. 

The  most  successful  character  cul- 
ture is  that  which  is  attempted  in  the 
tenderer  years  of  existence.  In  in- 
dividual life  as  in  social,  the  more 
helpless  and  impressionable  period  is 
the  earliest  period,  the  period  of  in- 
fancy and  juvenility.  This  is  the  period 
in  which  the  organism  is  most  suscepti- 
ble to  the  influences  of  the  animate 
and  inanimate  elements  of  environ- 
ment. In  after  years  a  being  becomes 
more  or  less  fixed  in  nature,  more  or 
less  self-determinative,  more  or  less 
calloused  and  inaccessible  to  the  influ- 
ences of  those  who  are,  and  that  which 
is,  about  him.  Realization  of  his  own 
power  and  importance  enters  with 
triumphant  ado  into  his  consciousness. 
Instead  of  acquiring,  he  concocts  his 
impulses.  It  is  the  stage  of  indepen- 
dency, and  of  possible  self-culture. 


274      BETTER-WORLD  PHILOSOPHY 

Self-culture  is  the  art  of  self-modifica- 
tion, the  art  of  that  stage  of  psychic 
evolution  when  a  consciousness  recog- 
nizes itself  as  a  process  capable  of 
conquest.  And  when  psychology  be- 
comes a  science  of  less  rarefied  func-. 
tions,  it  will  teach  pitiful  mortals  this 
glorious  art. 

It  is  excessive  to  hope  that  all  the 
egoism,  I  mean  the  superfluous  egoism, 
of  the  populations  may  during  the  life 
period  of  human  beings  be  subtracted. 
The  period  of  possible  reform  is  brief, 
the  nature  of  human  nature  is  stubborn, 
and  environment  is  necessarily  imper- 
fect. It  all  depends  on  the  amount  of 
egoism  to  be  eliminated,  and  on  the 
length,  the  sanity,  and  the  relentless- 
ness  of  the  effort. 

Revision  of  character  will  be  a  much 
more  tangible  and  scientific  thing  when 
the  physiology  of  psychology  becomes 
more  than  a  controverted  conjecture. 
There  has  been  no  attempt,  no  methodi- 
cal attempt,  to  amend  character  thru 


INDIVIDUAL    CULTURE  275 

physiological  and  neural  violence;  and 
about  all  we  know  about  the  possibilities 
of  such  a  surgery  consists  of  glimpses 
caught  on  occasions  of  casualty.  We 
do  know,  however,  that  neural  changes 
appear  promptly  and  invariably  in  con- 
sciousness, and  that  there  is  every 
reason  to  suspect  perfect  parallelism 
between  the  neural  and  psychic  pro- 
cesses. This  unfailing  attendance  and 
dependence  of  mind  on  physical 
phenomena,  and  the  superior  tangibility 
of  matter  over  consciousness,  assure 
the  prophet  that  an  accomplished  and 
sensitized  attention  is  the  all-essential 
to  the  achievement  of  psychical  amend- 
ment by  neural  and  physiological 
alteration.  In  the  New  Age  which  we 
prevision  and  approach,  among  the 
marvels  to  amaze  our  clumsy  contem- 
plations will  be  the  miracles  of  cerebral 
surgery,  the  physics  of  the  humors,  the 
science  of  the  physiology  of  conscious- 
ness. 


PRINTED  BY  R.  R.  DONNELLEY 
AND  SONS  COMPANY  AT  THE 
LAKESIDE  PRESS,  CHICAGO,  ILL. 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA  LIBRARY 

Los  Angeles 
ThisJbsooJi.isDUE  on  the-last  date  stamped  below. 


It  OF  RECEiEI 


A     000025226     2 


BETTER-WORLD 
PHILOSOPHY 

A  SOCIOLOGICAL  SYNTHESIS 


sy 
4.  HOWARD  MOORE 


SI 


